I studied Graphic Art and Design at RMIT in 1979 and 80, but left to marry and build a mud brick house with a boy whom I met there. Art took a back seat to building, kids, and eventually, the need to earn a living post-divorce. I put my creative skills to good use, running my own lead light and stained glass business, successfully, for several decades. That wrapped up eight years ago, when growing disability and health issues made the heavy work impossible. Since then, as health allows, I’ve devoted myself to painting and drawing. I had a successful solo retrospective show in 2018, and have exhibited in group shows and community art shows. My current affiliations are based around Emerald and Cardinia arts communities.

          I’ve thrown myself into painting and drawing, with all the years of pent up passion for my media, and subject matter that is in me. I once described myself as a realist, but ‘representational’ is more accurate. I don’t seek to capture a perfect image nor yet reproduce styles that have gone before, such as the Heidelberg School. I admire such work, but I seek a more visceral and immediate reaction and exploration of my subject. Essentially, I am compelled to paint the landscapes of my home state, Victoria, and especially the environs of the temperate rainforests, high country, farmlands and coasts. Though I occasionally choose other Australian subjects, it is my “home range’ that speaks to me.

          As a non-Indigenous person, I nevertheless feel a high degree of connection to the E Regnans, Dixonia Antarctica, waterways and places Melbournians live. The dichotomy of our landscape is what I explore. The incredible primal rocky solidity, the tress that look ancient even when they aren’t, against the precious fragility of the environments. The fern leaf against rock, the deep forest against the water that defines it. I want people to see my work and not only feel the beauty of the landscape, but understand the “meatiness” of its structure, and the miracle of the life that depends upon it. Above all, to be moved to treasure, conserve, act, for the environment.

          Mostly with oils, I work in my studio from photos I’ve taken, sketches and memory. I may change things a little to make my point, but not beyond recognition. With “The Weight of the Mountain, Eurobin Falls”, I was overawed by the huge rocky forms and the water carving through. The stone seemed to be two distinct types, and I wondered if it was Melbourne bluestone meeting Sydney sandstone? A meeting of geological plates? The painting needed a human for scale, so my girlfriend with whom I was camping, found her way in. Painting the rocks and deep moss was intensely satisfying, speaking to age and wisdom that one imagines places like Mt Buffalo, hold.

          I’ve been visiting Steavensons Falls since I first started dating my husband to be, and have many photos. We used to stay in Marysville regularly to hike. I’ve wanted to paint them for decades, but a trip I took with my daughter who was doing a senior High School assignment on bushfire recovery, two or three years after the fires, broke my heart and I thought I never would. Yet the incredible strength in the rock, the miracle of recovery were there. My last visit was after the pandemic, and I started a sketch, then put it away. My style was still developing and I didn’t feel I had a clear process and goal. But that’s resolved, and I knew it was time.

          As I move forward in my practice, I aim to build a coherent body of work that above all, says this is Victoria in all her strength and fragility. Treasure her.