Having traveled extensively last year including a month in Australia, I decided it was time to give myself the space and freedom to develop my painting. I re-organised my life in England so as to give myself 6 months to paint in Australia.

On a previous visit to Australia I had discovered the warm and friendly community in Cassilis and for the first 8 weeks of my visit I based myself on a property just outside the town. I chose a spot next to a creek kms from civilization, dug a dunnie, erected a tent, used the creek to bathe in and strung a large tarpaulin between trees for shelter to paint under.

Thus the adventure began….surviving the singing heat and dramatic thunderstorms of the bush, trying to use the paint before it dried on the palette, having to work from sun up to sun down as opposed to working late into the night which is my normal practice, the exciting encounters with the wildlife, the 5ft Goanna which wondered through the camp, the fox on its daily afternoon territorial walk, the wombat who lived the other side of the creek became my regular companion, the friendly Rosella who would visit and enjoy my museli and my constant battle not to be bitten more than a few times a day by the ants, this became my way of life and I enjoyed every moment of it.

My work at first was very figurative, this was necessary to discover the colours, forms and structures of the Australian landscape, the trees, long blonde grasses, sandstone cliffs, wide open spaces and sun bleached surfaces. From this figurative start the work has developed, although still using regressional space, the loose representation of what I saw and experienced has resulted in this series of semi-abstracted landscapes.