The Colours of Australia: 1 Painting

I am one of the artists included in the Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2020 Exhibition. I was also included in the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize Exhibition of 2019. Trained originally as a psychologist, I focus on human states of mind such as exhaustion, angst, grief, joy and resilience. I ‘paint’ with oils, acrylics, bamboo pens, inks, my iPad, acrylic markers and traditionally marginalised tools such as Sharpies and sketchbook paper. I create a balance of emptiness and coloured space to embody the Japanese concept of Wabi Sabi. Wabi Sabi is a philosophy and an aesthetic that emphasizes the impermanence, imperfection and incompleteness of life. Another Japanese concept fascinates me. Kintsukuroi is the Japanese art of mending broken ceramics with gold such that the value of the mended piece is greater than that of the original. As a philosophy, it is seen as similar to Wabi-Sabi, which is the embracing of the flawed or the imperfect. Not only is there no attempt to hide the damage, the repair is highlighted and celebrated as part of the history of the object. While painting, I mindfully attend to both my internal and eternal worlds to open a space in which adversity is transformed into something beautiful.