Magritte's Lemon Painting

Drawing and painting seem to be two of the threads that bind and connect my life. Many of my earliest memories growing up in Australia involve holding a brush or pencil in my left hand. I used to draw on the cardboard stiffening from my dads shirts, the flyleaves of books, or paper I cadged from the butcher, anything, just to have a surface to make some marks upon. For some years I worked in encaustic and abstraction, exploring the elements of texture and composition. However, in 2015 I found myself returning to realism, in particular an exploration of household objects. These still life pictures and the study of small things, beyond bringing me into contact with a variety of surface and texture, have had me thinking about the nature of our surroundings and the objects we gather. Some mundane, others accumulating the patina of use and holding precious memories.