Recent Exhibition at Gallery Bodalla

 Opened January 23, 2014

This exhibition was held at exhibition at the wonderful Postmasters Gallery in Bodalla. The shows here are consistently of a very high quality and the gallery spaces work well for exhibiting my scale of works.

The Kimberley region in Western Australia is literally at the opposite end of the continent from Bodalla. If a line is drawn from Bodalla through the geographical centre of Australia, it intersects the coastline near the mouth of Prince Regent river, in the heart of the Kimberley.

The contrasts between this remote landscape and our wild but somewhat gentler coast are many, and in assembling these paintings I hoped to convey something of the spirit of the places. As usual with my work, the paintings were mostly been done in situ using pastels and clear acrylic medium on canvas.

Camping in the Kimberley and walking into difficult locations limits the scale of the work, and most of the Kimberley paintings are on A3 size canvas for portability.

Working closer to home, larger canvasses are possible, and the physical nature of attempting virtual completion of work on site imbues the works with, I believe, a certain vitality and sense of truth.

I have been painting what I see for over 50 years, and the process still excites. Walking out with a canvas and colours, looking and being, working with no plan, coming back to the studio with a meaningful image that didn’t exist a few hours before; that simple act is immensely satisfying.