• Words Words Words

  • 2021

    For years, my mother kept cuttings from the newspaper or magazines – articles or sayings which obviously meant something to her. She kept these in the bedroom, in her chest of drawers. She liked words, and she had a beautiful singing voice. But none of this was ever developed into anything as she had never had the opportunity or education. Years later, I found myself doing a similar thing. The internet has been a great source of information as I can use it to find out more about issues that intrigue or worry me, and of course phrases and comments from artists about their works and what has inspired them. Along the way I have written down quotes on bits of paper, many of which ended up taped onto doors and walls in the kitchen. Eventually I decided to consolidate on canvas a selection of those that were most pertinent to my life.

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  • Mother Nature

  • 2021

    The Covid-19 pandemic has seen most of us spending much more time at home. The lack of social distractions and travel with ever-increasing media attention, not only on the effects of the pandemic, but also other pressing issues related to the environment, led me to this series of works recognising the power of Mother Nature.

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  • The Linear History of Mother Earth

  • 2021

    I was inspired by the geological formations in the beach-side cliffs at Tuhawaiki (Jack’s) Point, just south of Timaru. The lines and wrinkles and collapsed areas of loess/clay relate not only to the passing of time on the landscape, but also to what we see in the mirror as we age. We are all part of Mother Earth.

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  • Trees Under Threat

  • 2021

    Trees give us life. They add beauty to our surrounds, and provide us with shelter and food. They are living, sentient beings. They give us hope for a planet that is in peril. And yet we mould, mutilate and destroy them. I recently watched in dismay as neighbours lopped off the limbs of an old copper beech tree in an adjacent garden - because it dropped leaves on their lawn and drive in autumn. The tree has been left permanently disfigured, its mutilated branches revealed each autumn and winter. Sadly, trees are unable to protect themselves, and in this case neither the owner nor anyone else could dissuade or prevent the vandals from carrying out their destruction.

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  • Seasons series

  • 2021-22

    As I get older I have become even more aware of the passing of time. I am lucky enough to be surrounded by a large garden, and its appearance, with the changing seasons, new growth and eventual decay, are reflected in these paintings.

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  • Screwed-Up World

  • 2021-22

    This series, “Screwed-up World", has been developed from my earlier “Mother Nature” series, and is related to the “Life Cycles” series on which I was working during the same period. The environmental effects of climate change, a global pandemic, and now a disastrous military invasion in Eastern Europe, suggest that humankind is living in a tumultuous Autumn and heading into a bleak Winter from which many will not live to see the Spring.

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  • Life Cycles

  • 2022

    In nature, a life cycle is a series of stages that each living thing (and the universe as a whole) goes through - from its beginning in a developmental stage, through growth to maturity (where it can reproduce, thus ensuring a new life cycle), to old age and death.

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  • My Garden – The Rose

  • 2022

    I am surrounded by a garden filled with flowers, shrubs and trees that are home to a myriad of birds and insects, as well as many tiny subterranean beings and organisms. Daily observation of the diversity of life forms in my small part of the world has made me even more aware of the passing of time, and the commonality of experience that we humans share with the rest of our planet – and beyond. This series was inspired by the many old roses in the garden and made me think of a poem I learned when I was little – the  “party piece” I used to be asked to recite for visitors when I was about 4 years old:

    I wonder, I wonder,
    Who lives in the heart,
    The heart of the velvety rose.
    Is it a goblin?
    Or is it an elf?
    Or is it the Queen
    Of the fairies herself?

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