My main inspiration as an artisit comes from my mother who painted for pleasure all her life. She was a realist painter who also did decorative wood carving; and as well she sang and played the piano. As children we grew up with her creative activities all around us.
I have been a late starter to take up a paint brush, having begun seriously in 2005 when I took lessons from Fiona Bilbrough, a tonal artist. Before that I did linocut print making for a few years at the CAE Melbourne with Deborah Klein and David Frazer. For the last four years I have concentrated on improving my drawing skills, and have been attending regular sketching classes at the National Gallery of Victoria and master classes with Marco Luccio.
I love painting with oils, usually preferring a medium sized canvas. In my still life paintings, I like to combine a representational style with a linear influence taken from doing linocuts, in which outline and varying shapes of objects become significant, and are softened and contrasted with draped fabric. |
