I wish to pay homage to where I live with my work, this is a richly beatific place. I sense that my paintings belong, that I’m picking up on something very particular to here.

We are standing on earth that has been here almost from the beginning. Environmental events transpire which colour and expose, cover and re-expose, morph and settle, move and shape the earth around us. From the air much of this can be seen as bands of colour, geological forms, dendritic patterns and fluvial scars. These leave marks on the earth’s surface and has largely been formed from the movement of water and sedimentary deposits. The sparkles often seen from above are reflections of Oceania - the West.

Since man has been working these harsh, inhospitable lands, the patterns from our human existence begin to come through. In the form of fire scarification, water catchments, survey marks, roads tracks, fences, and farming cultivation. It is apparent where the brute and beautiful nature have overcome the borders, transgressed and destroyed the order that modern man attempts to create, leaving behind traces of what was.

It’s my visual observation and sentiment that because nature never stops moving, shape shifting, and terra forming, I want to mimic this mood through layering of events on the canvas. Evident through the materiality of media, and the ever-beautiful modes and patterns of water movement.

All of these events leave traces, I often refer to the marks as palimpsests - made with the hand and the brush. Disappearing and reappearing, leaving just a shadow or a hint of time. Those marks are notations on what went before - some semi-precious, some worthless and meaningless and corrupted by imperfection. In this sense a painting could potentially go on infinitum, ever-changing and evolving.

Each work in this exhibition is a time capsule; capturing that specific moment of our extraordinary geography.

WA has some of the oldest geology on the planet, and I feel privileged to be living here.