Exhibitions & Awards

Background 

I like that haunting, vaguely musky smell of old oil soaked timber and crusty old engines caked in grease. As a child I used to watch my father potter around his cluttered garage, his tools hung neatly on the walls, each with its own special place. I was never allowed to touch anything but I loved being with him there, among those objects and his old heavy timber workbench. I guess my interest in old industrial subjects comes from those magical times with my father.

As a student, I spent much time around the industrial sites of the Balmain peninsula, gathering material for my major work on the Sydney Harbour Ferry Services. The Colgate Avenue workshops that maintained the harbour ferries, SG White & Company workshops on Fitzroy Avenue (where restoration of the ferry South Steyne would later take place and where later I became a member and volunteer of The South Steyne Steamship Preservation Society), the Balmain and White Bay Power Stations were all rich sources of subject matter for a young student driven by a powerful need to paint and draw. Obtaining permission to enter the workshops was easy then, especially for a young woman with a smile and a sketch book!

Influences are too many to list but I’m interested in masters of light; particularly Spanish artist Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, the Skagen Painters of Denmark, the Australian Impressionists of the Heidelberg School and the lesser known Australian Tonalist painters. Contemporary artists Henry Hensche, Tibor Nagy, Kim Cogan, Jeremy Mann (the list goes on and on…) stimulate my fascination with the different moods created by ever changing light.