Madame Brett's Hat factory III Painting

Traveling through outback Australia, I was struck by the eerie, ghostly quality of the barren landscape, inhabited only by abandoned buildings and rusty cars. I tried to convey this feeling in my paintings by using impressionistic, feathery brushstrokes and blurred edges, to create a sensation of shimmering movement and an aura of mystery. To me, the car wrecks were especially poignant - missing headlights and doors hanging off their hinges were suggestive of broken limbs, the rusty patina and peeling layers of paint on their carcasses were anthropomorphic images reminiscent of a body’s demise. As the vehicles rust, and vegetation grows up through them, or they sink into the red soil, they appear to be reclaimed by the earth. The abandoned buildings make soulful, lonely markers of time in the landscape - they too will disappear. The following series depicts commercial buildings in New York under construction. I was again struck by the haunting quality of these as yet uninhabited structures with their gaping hollows and scaffolding, soon to be masked by windows and doors. A spooky quality remains of what once filled these spaces before they were defined by new frameworks, as well as their future unrevealed, unnamed occupiers. The work comprises two approaches: some have a more sunny, upbeat quality, others possess a gloomy, rainy and rather foreboding aspect. I then went on to paint works of abandoned factories and broken-down buildings. The theme of who or what once occupied these huge, haunting spaces fascinates me. I feel this work is a natural progression from my previous subject matter (abandoned, rusty cars in the Australian desert and upstate NY, and buildings under construction in NYC) because the paintings explore mysteries of the past contained within the empty shells of buildings, and an uncertain future. Currently, I am working on paintings of cars again - from a different perspective. I find them in rural salvage yards here in the US. ARTIST BIO I was born in 1967 and raised in London, England. I attended St Martin's School of Art in London and then Rhode Island school of Design, in Providence, graduating in 1989 with a BFA in Illustration. After graduation, I moved to San Francisco and taught in a school for underprivileged children, then pursued my interest in book arts. I returned to London in 1992 and worked as an illustrator, graphic designer and art director for magazines, corporate identity and publications.