2022

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022 and the horrific and tragic images of displaced, injured and dead Ukrainian children, seen daily in the media, moved me to paint these works. Their plight is not the only one, nor is it solely of this time and place. I come from a generation whose parents were directly involved in a global war, and I married a man who grew up in Eastern Europe during World War 2, and who later became a political refugee starting a new life on the other side of the world. I know first-hand the effects on those who survive the horrors – horrors which continue to touch their own wives, children and grandchildren. I fear for the children of Ukraine, and all those other children in Africa, Afghanistan, Syria, and even my own country – untouched directly by war but where thousands of children are fed by charities every day because of poverty arising from unsustainable rises in the costs of living.

The global nature of the effects of war, famine, abuse and poverty on children is referenced by my use of a circular support for this series of paintings. The colours recall the flag of Ukraine, but the techniques used relate to my previous work about the environment on which humankind as a whole is waging war.  The first painting in this series recalls the shock of war, like a flood when a dam bursts. In the second work, children and fractured families are scattered across the globe. The third work can be interpreted as the ongoing generations of those scattered people, who find themselves in a world which may no longer be able to support them because of the global “war’ that humankind has inflicted on its own home – pollution, destruction of the natural environment, desertification of once-liveable places.

In this series  I use the title of a poem by Joseph Kerschbaum, Where Have All the Children Gone, which in turn may have been inspired by Pete Seeger’s anti-war song from 1955 Where Have All the Flowers Gone. Ironically, Seeger’s words were based on a traditional Cossack folk song Koloda-Duda, referenced in the 1934 novel And Quiet Flows the Don, by Russian author Mikhail Sholokhov (whose mother was born in Ukraine).

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2022

“Surveillance” is defined as monitoring of behaviour, activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing.

Humans seem to have a need to watch each other. It can be simple curiosity - idle observation or the neighbourhood busybody who seems to have eyes everywhere. At a different level, surveillance may involve the justifiable gathering of information to prevent or investigate crime - or it can be for the purposes of carrying out crime.

Extreme versions are the stalker or the spy. In these worst case scenarios, surveillance might be aimed at gaining power over another person through the acquisition of embarrassing or incriminating behaviour, or for political or military purposes.

We live in an era of pervasive and increasing surveillance, whether by domestic, business or community CCTV cameras, tracking of data through social networking, or spying satellites.

Surveillance can unjustifiably violate people's privacy, and a liberal democracy usually has laws designed to restrict governmental and private use of surveillance. Such restrictions are not usually found where there is authoritarian government.

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2023-24

Almost daily, people say “the world has gone crazy”. Is it a new phenomenon? Apparently not. In the 1570s-80s the word “crazy” described someone diseased or sickly, or a broken, cracked or flawed object. By the 1610s it referred to a deranged or unsound mind. The Jazz Age of the 1920s saw a new variant of “crazy” – anything cool or exciting. Today, a “crazy world” can be anything from extreme, life-threatening situations to outrageous, bizarre, or fantastic behaviour.

The constant stream of (mis/dis)information and news overwhelms our attempts to construct and maintain order in the increasing chaos of daily life. We are left confused and dispirited by everyday and globally significant events. Political decisions driven by ideologies increasingly result in bloodbaths that engulf the innocent.

The latest digital phenomenon, AI (artificial intelligence) potentially submerges or destroys reality, invoking some sort of sci-fi scenario. Its intrusion into the world of art leaves us doubting if the work is the product of a human being or an information-fed machine. Maybe it’s a useful tool, and maybe not. The algorithms scrape the internet using the work of multiple artists – is this any different from art influencing art, or is it a sophisticated form of plagiarism? Just another aspect of our “Crazy World”.

Numbers 1-4 and 10 in this series are small, and have been reproduced as greetings cards. They utilize some of the motifs from my early works, as do numbers 5-12. The remaining work is more abstract in form.

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2024

During 2024, I collaborated with potter Jennifer Quérée in a series of ceramics, parallel to my paintings in the “Crazy World” Series. Jennifer made stoneware bowls, vases and dishes, as well as several free-form slabs, which I decorated using ceramic pencil and underglazes. The bisque-fired pieces were then finished with a clear glaze. As in the paintings, I drew on and developed many of the motifs from my early series Children’s Games (1985) and Daze of Our Lives (1986). These had also been reiterated in Moments of Truth (2016) and Unexpected World (2017).

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From time to time, I spontaneously paint or draw something in response to a vivid memory, an emotion, an event, a situation that I find myself caught up in. These works are stand-alones that do not usually develop into a larger series.

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