PAST WORK
This is a portfolio of selected Very Small Paintings which have sold in the past. Limited to two sizes, these are mostly of architectural details and glimpses of the city skyline from my local neighbourhood, the Balmain peninsula in Sydney. They are roughly in order from the most recent going back to 2012.
Selected paintings [facades & urban landscapes]. Many follow on from my Peninsula Rooftops & Facades series. Looking up, you see architectural facades marking significant times of the past, from Early Settlement to Art Deco to Modern. Each has a unique story, these paintings focus on shapes and textures captured in the mid-day or late afternoon light. These are all sold.
Selected paintings from Australian country regions on road or rail trips. The colours of the rural landscape and country town facades are quite different to those of the city. Vast stretches of country, verdant green or sun-dried and parched, it’s always exciting to see the contrasts, especially the blue sky and red earth out west. These are sold.
Marine and maritime paintings are loosely based on memories of being there on the day. The ocean pulls us in two directions; calming and still or angry and dangerous. Waterfront, boats and related subjects, ocean beaches (especially late in the day when the water turns a dark ink blue), you are alone with the sound of the sea and distant birds.
Other paintings include figurative works, some commissions and paintings that don’t fit other categories.
Once labelled the Gateway to Balmain’s Industrial Waterfront, White Bay power station was ‘state of the art’ technology, generating the energy to run the city’s entire railway system. It finally closed in 1984 and remained abandoned for almost 30 years, standing silent in decay, reduced to just a nesting place for some birds.
The last remaining major industrial site on the foreshore of Sydney’s Rozelle Bay
The site is enormous, you can see it from almost everywhere on the Balmain peninsula and beyond, it really is ‘inyaface’! I couldn’t stop looking at this giant neglected structure so I started painting it. It looked beautiful in a grungy kind of way – in late afternoons when the sun glistened on its broken windows and red brickwork and equally striking on grey days in the rain. So in October 2016 I held a solo exhibition : WHITE BAY: AN EXPLORATION OF AN ABANDONED INDUSTRIAL SITE. The paintings included works from the exhibition plus some earlier paintings, as the power station awaited its fate. More recent paintings focus on the architecture, construction and its present form in a bright new life.
