Karijini.

In 2016 I was artist in residence in the beautiful little town of Cossack in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

While I was there I visited Karijini National Park and spent hours exploring that amazing landscape.

Still inspired by my time there I have just entered my modern art painting Karijini into this year’s Cossack art prize.

Fingers crossed.

Full Moon Over An Ancient Landscape.

Then first glimpse that virgin moon

Her chrome soaked tears new shadow cast

And whispers of the things she’s seen

In time before we call the past.

I have just entered my latest contemporary art piece ‘Full Moon Over An Ancient Landscape’ into the Paddington Landscape Prize.

Fingers crossed that I will be selected as a finalist.

Our Story Continues. We have moved to live in Ubud and we are building our dream house.

Things are really moving fast now and this is starting to look like a real house.

The 12 meters of metal doors have been installed and the roof is going on.

We have chosen a beautiful badeg woven from black and white bamboo as our ceiling.

The iron wood decks are going in and larger frangipani’s are planted.

The electrician is here with his two dogs and has hung the chandelier.

Friends come to visit to admire the progress and we start to imaging living here.

stay tuned for moving in day.

The Long Lunch.

my feature painting for this years Art Upmarket on the 19th of October at Winthrop Hall UWA.

Building of our house in Ubud has started now we have fun shopping for materials.

After so much planning the building of our dream house has started. We are on site every day, it is so exciting to see things moving ahead.

We are out every day looking at the materials and finishes that we want in our house.

We find some beautiful re-cycled Ironwood timber, perfect for the outdoor areas.

In a junk shop I find a chandelier, the price is crazy and well over budget but I am not leaving without it.

In the same shop, a place where we would spend many hours over the next few months, we find heavy decorative metal panels salvaged from houses in Java, perfect for those places that we want to leave open but still secure.

We buy the three temples we need find some amazing flying dragons that will go onto the roof.

Ancient Landscape my new work on paper.

Take a look at how I create my contemporary art pieces in my latest video.

I started this painting by applying thin layers of acrylic wash. Then adding details with black ink.

More layers of thin acrylic applied with a roller to build up the texture.

To finish I worked more details with black ink.

We have our land and now to build our dream house.

For many months, while living at Nando House I had been designing how I imagined our dream house in Ubud would look. Everywhere I went I would take a tape measure with me and I would measure rooms and ceiling heights. I looked at materials people had used in their houses and made notes of what I liked. Now that we had our land I was able to refine my designs to suit and spent many hours there with my sketch book and tape measure getting my design right.

I found a local company who could translate my drawings to working plans. At a meeting with them they told me that they also built houses. We looked at many of their projects and liked what they were doing. We had our builder.

We had a survey done and the shape and size of our house was pegged out on our block, this was changed three times, the last time Tim and I did at dawn one morning.

We signed a contract with the builders and we are ready to start to build the first house we have ever built.

We are living in Ubud.

For years we imagined living in Ubud but really it was a distant dream, sometimes dreams do come true and we were here. We knew that the process ahead us, finding and leasing land and building a house would take time, so we settled into Nando House, a Balinese homestay close to the center of town. Nando House suited us perfectly, it was within easy walking distance to the area where we wanted land and the family were very welcoming. This would be our home for the next two years.

Our large room became our bedroom, sitting room and of course, painting studio. We had a small bathroom and even smaller kitchen.

And so, with the help of Pak Gusti the journey of finding land began. A group of friends from Perth came to visit and we showed them around through the muddy rice fields.

After many months we found the perfect piece of land and met with the family who owned it, I also started my first drawings of how I imagined of house.