October 07th, 2022

2018-2022 New Horizons 

I began exhibiting regularly in the nineties, after studying at Elam and then working in Japan.
For many years my painting was the priority in my life around family, friends and teaching, and that changed in 2018. Over the last 5 years I have been in 'service' working for a charity in Coromandel. I have mostly had a studio during that time but I chose to put a lot of creative energy into the work of managing and growing the retreat centre. There has been time to reflect on my practice, to be in a new psychological space stimulated by the access to profound teaching taking place at the retreat, while living a simpler life fully immersed in nature and off-grid.

I have observed my painting desires, and contemplated the strength and nature of what that calling is. It is a happiness. My practice at its best is a free form meditative space that is endlessly exciting, challenging and integrative.  I appreciate the form of my practice now more than ever and how essential it is to connecting and processing my life, a life.

Time out has been an opportunity to be private and play, to reinvent, to go off on tangents, to dig, to meander, to sew seeds and not worry so much. Also to make short films, small objects, photograph, plant, bake, tend, listen and stretch.

I am now back in my studio in Wellington, and ready to reprioritise energy and time to continue my practice in it's fullness. 

The work below is LOCK DOWN ! work!
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Lala land 
T​his work is a response to the spaces I encounter and inhabit, walking the land and observing growth and change. I work intuitively, unfolding thoughts and ideas in the mix and push of the paint. Responding to the layering of materials, I want outcomes that are unexpected. I try to attune with the gravitational forces of liquidity, how it ebbs and flows, the qualities of transparency and opacity.  It’s important to me that the work looks natural, light, easy, (but it is not easy!). Poured, pooled, saturated, floating forms, their edges and boundaries congeal to offer a terrain for thought.