Colour has taken hold of me; no longer do I have to chase after it.
I know that it has hold of me for ever. That is the significance of this blessed moment.
Paul Klee 1914

The Artist

My fundamental approach is painting out of colour. I first met colour forty years ago as a student and I have been entranced with it ever since.

My core artistic medium is watercolour painting, specialising in a non-traditional approach inspired by the anthroposophic approach of Rudolf Steiner to art. For me, water is as central to painting as is colour. Watercolour has a luminosity that gives it an innately spiritual quality, a translucency that breathes …. In the breathing, you can experience living and dying and becoming and dying away again. The breathing movement of watercolour leads you across the physical threshold towards the unseen and unknown. It transforms the material substance of pigment through its fluid nature and lifts it to a higher plane.

I painted murals for 15 years using a fluid technique called lazure , producing over 600 sq.m of murals in Australia, New Zealand and Belgium, most frequently in medical/therapeutic centres. Such environments are particularly suited to the saturated yet subtly translucent surfaces of lazure where mental health as well as physical wellbeing is the priority. Through my training in art therapy and many years of working with colour, I developed a special sensitivity to the effects of light, colour and mood on the spatial environment, hence the name of my practice, Painted Space. I no longer paint murals – too much climbing – but that sense of the importance of the spaces we live and work in still informs my work. 

Professional: Emerson College and Tobias School of Art and Therapy in England, in Waldorf Education, visual arts and artistic therapy

The Academic

For me, art and research go hand in hand. Artistic practice is a research process. I need to understand the whys as well as the hows of artistic creation and I use my research skills to guide all my teaching and artistic practice. As a rigorous researcher, I like to peel back the layers of whatever I am exploring to find its essence. The search for the truest quality of a colour, a word, the best expression, the clearest statement to describe that essence goes on.

I am as much an educator as an artist and regularly lecture on the role of art in human life, cultural history, phenomenology, creativity and consciousness. I have been a teacher for more than 35 years at community, vocational and tertiary levels with a reputation for a clear yet immersive teaching style. I value the diversity of my trainings and experience as this gives me the ability to cross the traditional boundaries between Art, Science and Spirituality.

Academic: BA (Honours) in Communications (English & Linguistics), Macquarie University; MA in Information Science and a PhD on creative thinking, University of Technology Sydney (UTS).

 

Memberships

National Association of Visual Arts
Sektion für Bildende Künste
Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education
Stream of Life Research Studio.