Kelly Neil Audrey and Eleanor at the Sydney Opera House

I love the photo that was taken of Kelly and her family at the opera house in Sydney. It’s the composition of the family together that struck me as it makes a wonderful painting. I didn’t let the backdrop of Sydney Harbour get in the way.

Kelly at Camden Airport

I love the photo I found of Kelly Kruger when she was a child riding around on her bicycle at Camden Airport. Her dad flies gliders and so spent a fair amount of time at the maintenance hangar at Camden. She would be kept occupied with various fun activities while he was there.

My high school friend's mum and dad

Kim Clancy is one of my long time friends from high school in Ballina NSW. She asked me to paint a portrait of her mum and dad so she could give it to her mum for Christmas 2018. Her dad died a few years ago, so it was a special commission as it means so much to her family.

The Menacing Women

I’ve been working on a charcoal and chalk drawing to submit to the Dobell Drawing Prize this year. It’s a composition I’ve painted before and is based on a mixture of Picasso’s Desmoiselle d’Avignon and Veronese’s Conversion of Mary Magdalene. The women are the centre of attention and controversy in these artworks.

Painting myself laughing

Well this was a big challenge as the proportions of my face are different when I laugh. I’ve ended up with an interesting self portrait. My mouth is a bit too low, my eyes are a bit high and too small. My hair looks wet and stripy. Another learning experience.

Painting my mum

My mum turned 80 last week on Wednesday. She's always been a huge supporter of me in whatever I decide to do, especially if it's following my dream of creating art. I painted a photo of mum from about 10 years ago. It's not bad for a first attempt. I think I need to do some more of mum though.

Painting my husband

I decided to try painting my husband's face. I traced a photograph of him to get the correct proportions and shapes. Then I transferred the image to a canvas by rubbing some red chalk on the tracing and drawing over the top. The challenge was in looking at the subtle variations in tones, cool and warm colours to achieve something more than a realistic image. I wanted to capture the attitude of his appearance.

Fishy business

I decided to do some collage, but instead of cutting out paper and other media and gluing things down, I used my digital items to find things to put together. It was a pretty random gathering of items, but it turned out to be a comment on the financial services industry. The AMP building is there in the midst of this artwork.

Working big

Here you can see I've been working on a couple of large paintings. The paintings are about 2 metres wide and are based on some small scale works I painted earlier this year. I've combined Veronese paintings and some of Picasso's motifs. I'm not sure about the work yet. I think I need to have a rest from it and work on it later.