Growing up in the western coastal of suburbs of Perth, I never really had any interest in art, studied art at high school but like most of us who chose that subject it was just a way to get out of the grind of sitting at a desk doing “real” schoolwork. My only other association with art was the myriad of paintings that my dad bought every time he went to Hong Kong on business, our house was full of paintings mostly of Chinese junks at all times of the day in all types of colours, there was even one painted on black velvet …. Well, it was the early 70s.
My real interest in art came after attending a wedding overseas and staying in a luxurious house owned by art collector. The house was full of very large colourful paintings in nearly every room, and I remember that “wow “ feeling everyone felt when they entered the rooms. Lot of the paintings were flowers or simple outdoor scenes done in abstract style, but it was the bright colours and the blending of them that really stood out for me. The more I looked at these paintings, the more I convinced myself that I could do that and was going to paint one to put on my living room wall. Upon arriving back in the country I was living at the time I bought an old painting in a junk shop ,a pack of 12 Chinese oil paints for about three dollars ,found a picture in a travel magazine and drew a grid on it and the same on the canvas ,sketched the picture on, then painted it in the colours I liked …I was impressed and that was the start of my new hobby., I still use that same method sometimes or by projecting a picture onto a canvas and tracing it. Some people think that’s a bit like cheating, but there are no rules in art. My art is purely about aesthetics and what appeals to me, and I don’t expect viewers to engage with any deeper layers of meaning embedded within each piece or brushstroke, because there is none ,it’s just art for arts sake.