Willy Wagtail Painting

Finalist, Refocus Awards (People's Choice), 2024 Finalist, The Facet Art Prize, 2023 Finalist, The Alice Prize, 2020 I'm an artist and photographer from Byron Bay, in the beautiful sub-tropical region of the Northern Rivers, on the east coast of Australia. The region is known for its beautiful scenery and spectacular wildlife, which I enjoy photographing as a nature photographer. Alongside my career as a scholar and writer, I've been creating art all my life, exhibiting my work at art festivals around the world. In 2017 I decided to launch my own art business, Scorching Skies Art, as an outlet for my encaustic artworks, some of which can be seen here. The technique I'm known for is known as 'photographic encaustic'. It involves burning layers of melted beeswax into enlarged, heatproof photographs, which are bonded to wooden panels and then transformed into wax paintings through the application of oils, inks, pastels and other materials. The resulting artworks take on a life of their own and are impossible to replicate. I'm drawn to the technique because it has such an ethereal quality, and also because the way the wax and pigments mix under the live flame feels like alchemy. Recent accolades for my work include: Finalist in The Alice Prize 2020 for encaustic triptych, 'Alice's Finches' Finalist in the Lethbridge 20000 Small Scale Art Award, 2019 (for 'Swooping Bee-eater', Skyward Series) Finalist in the 2018 Australian Photography of the Year awards (landscape category) Nominations in the 2017 and 2018 Fine Art Photography Awards, London (nature and wildlife categories) Shortlisted nominations in the 2017 and 2018 Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards, London (earth's environments and black and white categories).