Mum's Best Friend

Okay so I have really neglected my blog posts in recent months which is very frustrating.

But it's also a good sign I have been busy, and thankfully have the artwork to prove it.

Here's a little work I sent home to Australia for my Mother's Birthday in April (a month late but she was very understanding - a friend carted it there on a business trip) and it's a portrait of her watering the garden in her front yard with her faithfull adoring Jack Russell Terrier Holly keeping her company.

The house has changed dramatically as the folks have renovated and repainted the joint since I left, but it will forever be remembered like this for me. The Sydney afternoon sun through the Eucalypt trees, the light (which is very different than here in Canada)- I can almost hear the ciccadas in the trees...

I'm inclined to think I was inpired a little by the late great Howard Arkley, an enigmatic and idiosyncratic Australian Artist who focussed much of his work on the Suburban mailaise, and the bungalows of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane Adelaide and Perth's "Burbs". Here's a little You Tube Video of him:



(I'd have painted Dad but you can't see him watching television on the couch from this angle..!)


16 x 20 inches/40 x 50 cm, Acrylic on Canvas

Cold Canada

Living in Canada as been nothing but a delight. But it is a bit of rude shock to someone who has come from one of the hottest and the actual driest continent on Earth, to one of the most vast alpine and coldest winter countries which contains roughly 60% of the worlds fresh water.

I have to say I think I acclimatized pretty easily; I honestly thought I'd be a real fish out of water but then ironically living so close to the water on Sydney's Northern Beaches was kind of wasted on me. Haven't had a tan since I was a kid, and I didn't surf and went to the beach very rarely. Even my last home in Sydney I was one minute's walk from Dee Why point and could watch my room-mate Tom with an unobstructed view carving it up in the Surf every afternoon when I came home from work. Dee Why Beach has one of the worlds most coveted point breaks - something wasted on me as I say.

As a result I'm completely fascinated by snow, snowy scenes and the 'Great White North' in general. I can watch the snow fall like a dog watching television for hours. I was in Montreal for Christmas at my Mother in law's and witnessed the biggest snow fall in the region in one day since 1971 - 47 cm..! I was glued to the windows..!

But it's not just the weather and climate; it's the landscape, the light, and the furnishings of the landscape. Barns for instance..! We, in Australia, grew up with Barns and Covered Bridges on our televisions and movie screens but none in our landscape. We didn't need them. So it's fascinating to see them in the flesh so to speak.

In October I worked on a series of Canadian Winter scenes which I also had made into Greeting cards. Here's a sample of a few of them.


Drop me a line if you would like to purchase some, I'd be delighted to take care of it.