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Hello 2025

16/8/2025

I seem to have been quiet for 2 years. I have been drawing and painting. However the most exciting thing that I have done was to go to Madagascar last year. I went to see the wildlife and I absolutely loved seeing the lemurs and chameleons in the wild. Seeing lemurs stream through the forest like water with their extraordinary fleetness and grace, it was so thrilling. And watching chameleons move or not move as some were pretty stationery was amazing - their eyes, the huge range of textures and patterning on their skin, their strange and odd hands and feet like mittens.
I am doing a series of elongated drawings of the chameleons using a very cool Japanese brass nib pen which holds so much ink or a normal pen on Arches watercolour paper. There is so much detail in the drawings that it almost becomes a meditation.

2023

9/1/2023

Well, it is 2023 already. And the most exciting thing so far is that I have a new studio. I am literally waiting for the floor to dry and then I hope to move in at the weekend. This is not so simple, as I have 2 plan cabinets which are big, a press that is small but very heavy and then simply masses of work, framed and unframed. As well as paintings, paints, tools, the aquatint box etc. Still, I can't wait! Next Pittwater Artists Trail Open Studio will be here in July 2023. Then you can see for yourself how it is just a perfect space.

Creative Open

11/8/2022

Creative Open starts this weekend south of Narrabeen. I will have my studio open next weekend, August 20th and the 21st. I will do some printing so people can see the etching press being used and the beautiful process of making an etching. I hope that some people come and see me in the studio.

Open Studio Pittwater Artists Trail

15/7/2022

Well, it is over a year since I wrote in here. I don't know why it has taken me so long. Anyway it is Open Studio next weekend, the 23rd and 24th of July at my studio. This is part of the Pittwater Artists Trail, I have been working on a series which I can only call my Blue Period. The sea, the sea. After Antarctica, I just want to paint blue images. And I have been doing print making and a lot of drawings of dogs and plants. Not together. I think the studios are all open from 10am to 4pm.

September 02nd, 2020

2/9/2020

Well, it feels like I have been away a long long time, and perhaps I have. This website and blog has been so neglected, but I doubt that anyone reads it anyway.
A post every couple of years is pretty inadequate and I am not sure I would be racing to see what I was going to say next.
Last year I spent in Australia, as I couldn't go to Madagascar in September to work on a lemur project as I broke my wrist 3 weeks before I should have gone. I postponed this trip to this September and now I should be leaving on Saturday and of course, I am not going there on Saturday. Or anywhere. Such a disappointment as I had the bedroll, the mosquito net, the solar torch and all the shots. I could have met a rabid dog without worrying. Which is a good thing as a local dog on Riverview Road sank its teeth into my hand recently, and the it was suggested that i get a rabies. I think that I fall into a very small group of people in Avalon that have current rabies status.
What I did do this year was go to Antarctica in March. I am so lucky, I flew out to Argentina on March 1st and got back to Sydney before the hotel quarantine. I went on the most wonderful expedition boat with a group called Quark Adventures. Every single day was amazing and I saw the most beautiful landscapes with such a reduced colour palette. I stood on the continent of Antarctica and I saw penguins, whales, seals and birds. We even saw Type D orcas as we were crossing the Drake Passage. I cannot begin to describe the purity and clarity of that place, and the sense of wonder.
Since then, in lockdown I have had this wonderful experience to think about. And I have started to put some of this in to my work. Drawing the seals, who have to have the most photogenic faces, and trying to paint the formation of the pack ice. The paintings are very abstract and I am looking at the patterns and shapes that i saw.
Well, that is probably enough for this post . I am going to try and write more for this next month too.

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I am Reading….

A big storm knocked it over by Laurie Colwin.
This is a reread, and I love her writing. A small canvas like Jane Austen but she says so much. Read it, if you can find this book.

Salonika Burning by Gail Jones.
This is a wonderful book, She writes beautifully and her work reminds me of Shirley Hazzard.

Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart.
I so enjoyed this book, it was funny. And the characters so exposed. July 2022

Our Shadows by Gail Jones.
This is such a good book. I had just read The Death of Noah Glass by her and both of these are so well written.
June 22

Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker
I loved this book and it felt so modern even though it is 60 years old. Apart from the lack of technology in it, no mobiles, no emails and no computers.
March 22

Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust
This has taken me some time and I have another 150 pages to go. It has been a challenging read and I find some of it extremely funny. I will let you know when I have finished it. Read more Austen and Mitford as light relief during this period. As well as other less memorable books. 21.02.21

The Dutch House by Anne Patchett
Such a wonderful book, I loved reading this, a perfect joy.

Olive again by Elizabeth Strout.
Just saying - a fabulous snall book. Olive is such a plausible, flawed character.

Milkman by Anna Burns
I have so loved reading this book. You enter another world where the dial has been moved and you have to tune in and recalibrate to this fine tone. It is wonderful.

The Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
This book is brilliant. I had never heard of him, and thank you to Avalon Library for having him on the shelf. I started with The Spectator Bird, then Crossing to Safety and now this book. I think I have read them in the right order for me. He is no slouch, having won lots of prizes including the Pulitzer. His writing is exquisite.

Nutshell by Ian McEwan
This book is brilliant.

The Fish Can Sing by Halldor Laxness
I had never heard of Halldor Laxness before, but I loved this book, and found it extremely funny. And he did win the Nobel Prize for Literature, so obviously no slouch.

Rereading
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford - hilarious and some of it so clever and finely drawn.

Persuasion by Jane Austen. Again

The Transit of Venus. I reread this book almost every year.

I am not reading
My Brilliant Friend. Have I missed something here?