Artist's statement

The Australian landscape in a number of manifestations - the local Brindabella Ranges, the Central Desert and the Kimberley's - has informed my practice for some thirty years. It constitutes the continuing narrative of journey, place and time that is the essence of my art. Although specific place(s) may be alluded to, my Australian landscape is a generalised one. Peculiarities of (individual) place are visualised through an abstract language that imbues universal rather than particular significance.

Observation and memory, combined with historical and topographical references, provide the conceptual and perceptual material that allows me to visually express my own very personal relationship with the land. That relationship is always underpinned by a quiet acknowledgement of the deeply spiritual connection between the land and its indigenous owners.

My recent work looks at places which have a particular resonance to my family history. A sixth-generation Australian, I have always been intensely interested and involved in the stories of my colonial ancestors. Their 'places' and interactions with indigenous land-use form the thematic base of my new work. The pictorial starting-points are 19th Century Parish maps, visual expressions of ownership and regulation. These provide a base for layered narratives of emigration, settlement and family histories which speak both of the new experiences of the recently arrived and their full embracing of their new home and the ancient stories of this land's original inhabitants.

The coalescence of the physical and the spiritual, the real and the imagined, derived from the above, underscore my work and continue to provide a rich and fertile ground for further exploration.