My landscape paintintgs are impressionistic or semi-abstract paintings of landforms, forests, mountains, and deserts that mean something to me. Some are familiar scenes from the Illawarra environment; others are exotic scenes from travels in distant countries. But all are idiosyncratic interpretations that express the emotional effect the landscape had on me, rather than attempts to reproduce it in a photo-realist fashion.

I go to water. I live in an area with beautiful beaches, welcoming rockpools and a magnificent lake, so why would I not? I go as often as I can: for fun, for exercise, for inspiration, for peace--and sometimes just to remind myself how small I am. These paintings celebrate some of these many encounters.

I enjoy painting the natural world. But cities, too, have their fascination. I am especially interested in street scenes that seem to offer a window into the lives of the people of the city: their history, their way of life, what matters to them. In these paintings, I try to capture moments when I felt I had the privilege of being admitted into the lives of others in this way.

I count myself lucky to have had--and to have--a life full of people: some whom I have known for very many years and who are very dear to me; some with whom I have had only a brief encounter and exchanged only a few words; some I have observed but never talked to; and some whom I have never met but whose stories I have come to know. In these paintings, I try to capture the particularity of some of these people--what makes them dear or interesting to me. Sometimes I do this through a stylised but (more or less) conventional portrait; sometimes through a telling, and often quirky, detail.

In these paintings, I tighten my focus to concentrate on individual plants and animals that have come into my life one way or another: as casual visitors to my garden; as pets my friends or relatives have loved, or things that they have grown; through chance or planned encounters in one of the many countries that I have had the good fortune to travel in. I try to capture what makes them unique, and the sense of wonder I have felt as I observed them.

Some of these paintings I could, I guess, call "Still Life." But they are not a collection of meticulously exact images of bowls full of fruit or vases of flowers. It's the oddities and the not-quite-right that attracts me most: the cracked vase; the swimming gear left lying around; the ordered mayhem of a wardrobe; cycling gear in a "Love Hotel".