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.