My current artwork brings together the gentle energy of horses, combined with their movement; and continually influenced by the quiet beauty of imperfections and impermanence.

When I was a kid my mum loved to have a punt on the horses. She would bring home Turf Monthly and I would pore over the glossy centrefold of the winning racehorse. Hours were spent drawing and painting that horse. I remember a friend of my dads, an old plumber showing me how he drew a horse. I can still see his big gnarly hands carefully drawing the rump and belly with a texta. Funny the things that stay with you.

When I left art school I began working for myself painting signs and murals. It seemed like a good use of my artistic skills to earn a living. It has been a lifetime of learning that beautiful craft and some days I still feel like a beginner.

My base (home) is in Sydney, near the sea, but I have been painting horses for the past few years now, drawn again and again to their form, their beauty, their colouring, the way the light hits them. In both small and larger works I have been experimenting with this as a way to capture movement, made quickly but with purpose.
I’m influenced by the spare simplicity of Japanese painting traditions and the notion of wabi-sabi — finding the beauty in the imperfect and impermanent. This meditative approach brings together both a slowing down alongside an action of making a mark. That’s important in this complex and too often anxiety-provoking world.

My process starts with hunting in old sheds and foraging in the paddocks to find lovely, old discarded materials to paint on and use to frame the work. These things have a history which resonates in the artwork. For me, the gentle energy of horses represents the antidote to the stresses of the times we live in.

Exhibitions