Summer 2021

Title: Summer 2021

200cm x 50cm x 40cm

I started work on this project just as borders began closing, and finished it in late summer as the vaccinations began. The headpiece is a mask of sorts – partly ceremonial, partly protective. The suit is shiny, made from a new natural textile, but it’s also the sheen of PPE. The figure is hung with amulets to ward off evil. Summer 2021 faces the pandemic with a brilliant resolve – to continue. Made in collaboration with Strangely Normal. Kindly funded by Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa.

SIMILAR ARTWORKS

Title: 10th August 2024

This is an unusually long format for me, and I enjoyed marching the procession of marks across the canvas; like the ancient Chinese way of map-making, the landscape read as one looks at it, rather than a vertical view.

Title: 14th January 2024

Three weeks staying in Alphabet City NYC at the end of 2023 had an immediate impact on my work. The relentless pace of the city, the visual cacophony of the streets, the exhilarating amount of art to absorb; it renewed my focus, simplifying and energizing my painting.

Title: 18th July 2024

Exhibited at Sydney Contemporary, this work anticipated the hot hues of the host city, with the cool green ribbon bisecting like a breeze, or river, or snake. I even heard from a viewer that the green line traced my life, twisted and almost broken in parts, yet enduring. Private Collection.

Title: 9th July 2024

Here is a riot of movement and colour, the long poles of spray colour pushing against the patterned fabric of lozenges in a dance of competing flavours, a cocktail that hits and lifts the senses. This painting has just asked the barman for another…

NEWS

Largest work to date 28th April 2023

My exhibition No Straight Lines at Te Where Toi o Heretaunga Hastings City Art Gallery provided the opportunity to negotiate with its Main Gallery, the largest un-poled space in the Southern Hemisphere.

Creative Matters Podcast

Whether you’re out for a stroll or need some aural distraction while working, you can now listen to me in conversation with Mandy Jakich at her lovely Muriwai studio for Creative Matters.

Exquisite Colours collaboration with Schmincke

My collaboration with renown German paint manufacturer Schmincke in 2022, designing the palette of colours for a Ultimate Mixing Set of Horadam Watercolours, was so successful that they asked me to devise a new set for 2023.

Newsletter February 2022

Delightfully, I’ve realised this newsletter reflects a part of my practice where elements come together to make a whole.