Greenwich from Parramatta River

The jacarandas are lovely this year and I’ve even heard stories that Sydney is now a destination for jacarandas! Imagine - cherry blossoms in Kyoto and jacarandas in Sydney!


I’ve always wanted to paint the magnificent purple against our red tiled roofs. Every year I set out to do it and every year I am delayed and miss the season altogether. Until now... this is my second jacaranda painting (on a roll heh heh) and this one taken from a ferry from Cockatoo Island.

Sea acres national park Port Macquarie

Recent holiday with family at Port Macquarie was fun and fruitful with seascapes to paint.


We went for a walk at sunset to the Sea Acre national park- such a gorgeous place. Spotted hundreds of humpback whales- no wonder they beach themselves. Pandanus palms line the shores. Paradise ...

Northland in Lord Howe

After a month off painting, term 4 begins. I’m thrilled to be back. This is a painting of the northern end of Lord Howe, populated by forests and volcanic rock. The surf is pounding here - so different from the idyllic lagoon where the beach is sandy and the water calm.

Venice urbanscape

As an antidote to all those Lord Howe aerials I decided to paint Venice. All those buildings in glorious warm colours against the brilliant green canals.


Sadly this is last lesson for Carla's class this term. Over the break I hope to produce more for our Lord Howe exhibition.

Larger Lord Howe

To finish the aerial series and provide context I painted this of Lord Howe Island from a photo I took from the plane.





It's a magnificent destination-best snorkelling I've ever experienced in Australia- much better than the Great Barrier Reef.

Incredible Lord Howe reefs

Regular readers would know that I'm attempting to paint Lord Howe island for a joint exhibition with Coralie my friend. Coralie has demanded at least 6 paintings and I'm dragging the chain as I've only done two.







Well, I've doubled my output since a week ago with these aerial reef paintings. The colours are as true as I can get and yes, they are incredible. But what I really like is the new Liquitex ceramic stucco medium that Carla introduced. It has the consistency of cement but what an effect! Just the perfect piece for reefs, rocks, mountains.

Reef beach near Fairlight

Sydney can be so stunning in winter - the sun shines and it's just the right temperature for walking. We went for a walk from Balgowlah to Manly a few weeks ago and it was glorious.





At Reef Beach, we stopped to admire the view and the sparkle of the water. This painting is an excuse to use gel medium for a beachscape.

Rework of mangroves at Cook River

This old painting needed a lift so I asked Carla what to do.


And here it is -zing added with those lovely lemon yellow.

Waterhole

I cannot claim to know where the site of this painting is as it arrived as a photo from my colleague Robert and Karen who are doing the grey nomad thing somewhere in NT. But it's a beauty so I decided to paint it.


Carla helped with this popping yellow colour - it really brings a zing to the painting. While it's probably not finished in her books and I will fiddle with it - I think it looks great.

Blue mountains

My painting style is slowly evolving. I was always using brushes but that is slow and the results are more precise and less impressionistic. In a bid to be more expressive, I have now done another palette knife painting and it's growing on me. The palette knife makes more textures and marks on the painting than it is possible with a brush. I'm especially proud of my sky - I don't think I've done one with so many colours that worked.

Honourable Mention

A pleasant surprise as I got this email today advising that I'd been awarded an Honourable Mention for my entry "Summer Escape". This painting prize is for ocean pools - a subject that I've painted time and again. One of the judges commented that this entry was a ‘striking well-composed image capturing all key features of ocean pools’. Here is what "Summer Escape" looks like.

Lord Howe - Mount Gower

Mount Gower is the peak of Lord Howe - terribly distinctive. You can see it and Mount Lidgbird virtually everywhere on the island. Climbing the mountain is hard work and takes virtually all day. I was never tempted but we met a couple who did and they said it was not for the faint hearted or unfit.


Betty Thompson of the Blue Lagoon Lodge where we stayed kindly took us for a tour of the south side. This is less touristy and not easily reached without a vehicle. This painting is of Gower from one of the remote beaches on the southern end of Lord Howe.

Desert cliff revisited

Readers might remember my efforts in copying Paul McCarthy's palette for desertscapes. However the painting required rework. So I brought it in for Carla's inspection and her suggestions improved the cliff face but I couldn't get the foreground right.


Taking a cue from my classmate Barry who had palette knived a lovely streetscape, I attacked it with brilliant colours, moulding gel and palette knife.

As it turned out, the inexact nature of marks left by the knife was perfect for the rocks. As I didn't clean it in between colour changes there was a lot of serendipitous mixes. After the foreground was done, it looked like two different paintings as the cliff face was still brush painted. I had to introduce some palette knife marks on that in a paler colour to make the painting look more cohesive. But now I'm satisfied with the results.

Bush scene

This painting was begun during Paul McCarthy's workshop earlier in this year and I never got a chance to complete it. I was attempting to emulate his wonderful colour scheme. Anyway I dragged it out to Carla's class for fine tuning.

Jen was attempting to photograph the classes so I was made to pose. Don't know if my photos will actually make the website. Not that it matters.

What matters is that my painting looks great ! It has all the textures of bush and I have not wrecked the McCarthy palette.

Lord Howe resurrected

My diptych of Lord Howe got shelved as I wondered how to lift it out of the doldrums. The beauty of attending a class is that I can bring all my unsatisfactory works for remedies and rectification. Carla is particularly helpful in this regard. She is so good at providing tips and colour suggestions and just moral support (!) Her suggestion to use a bird's feather for the grasses was pure genius.

Strausberg river

This painting has a very European subject- a river in Strausberg Germany. My colleague Ken and his family recently returned from a European holiday and while admiring his snaps I came across this one and was struck by its composition. The river curves leading the eye to those houses in the background, that are wonderfully reflected in the water.

View from mum's apartment

I know I haven't painted for a while but the recent sudden demise of my beloved mother did knock the stuffing out of me. There's much to grieve - not just for my mother but also saying goodbye to my childhood and my birth country.

Anyway I have finally managed to get back into painting and it is such a great excuse to meditate. I wanted to capture the view from Mum's apartment - this is what she would have seen everyday and it means much to me to have painted it.

I was not brought up in this apartment; this place was purchased much later after I had moved to Australia.
However it represents a home of some sort - a place where I would go and visit mum and enjoy some mothering myself. I believe that mum was happy living there. She was sometimes lonely but she felt secure in her unit. And it was a wonderful base for the whole extended family to gather - the grandkids enjoyed visiting Popo and using the pool.

Paul McCarthy workshop

As part of my new year resolution to paint more I enrolled myself in a workshop by Paul McCarthy. Paul is a wonderful colourist who seems able to make paintings pop.


So here was Paul as effusive as ever but he now doesn't teach much. Sadly economics has made Paul a funeral director (good grief - the most unlikely vocation for our wise cracking tutor).


I've always admired the way his colours go so this time I decided to copy his palette. These are not finished- I will get around it soon but these are works that I'm very pleased with.