I moved to Margaret River in 2008 after meeting my husband, eventually settling in Cowaramup. In 2015 our infant daughter was diagnosed with a rare cancer forcing us to move up to Perth for treatment and subsequent recovery. In 2018 we travelled Australia for 15 months living in our caravan. It was a healing time, immersing ourselves in nature and enjoying spending time together as a family. Once home, I set up a studio in our shed and returned to my art practice with a matured appreciation and determination to have a consistent practice and prioritise doing the things you love.
I feel its necessary to explain this journey, as its influence has woven itself into the themes I carry within my work today. Connection to our environment, and the healing aspects of spending time in nature are recurrent themes in my work. I want my paintings to take the viewer into the landscape and for them to feel a sense of calmness, an escape from the mental load of this modern life. A reminder of times spent outside in nature away from technology and distractions, and the emotions that invokes. My landscape work typically features atmospheric cloud covered skies with soft end of day lighting. I have found working on landscapes compliments my portrait practice as I enjoy the contrast from studying the expansiveness of the landscape, narrowed down to the intimacy and scale of someones face. We are all just one person out of billions on this huge big planet, yet we can all step outside and look up and see the same cloud covered skies. Bouncing back and forth between the two styles of work keeps me interested and excited.
Portraits and the human form have always fascinated me. Being able to recognise something about yourself in the work is the human connection we all share. The intimacy of studying someone so closely, and the technical challenges of achieving a likeness drive me and I have found myself heading down a path of realism with my style. I find a deep satisfaction with the process of putting all the bits together in the right place. I’m quite interested in the balance of how to incorporate realism, but still have the portrait feel like an artwork, as opposed to a photograph. I enjoy adding explorative mark making to juxtapose the realism, creating something to challenge the viewer and keep them interested.
I am currently enjoying exploring the two passions in my newest work which combines the two subjects, featuring the figure within the landscape.