Flannel Flower

The Flannel Flower isn’t a daisy, it’s an Australian native found in the sandstone heathland of coastal New South Wales and Queensland. It’s a true native, thriving after bushfires, and producing a profuse flowering in spring.

The soft white petals of the flower remind me of rich luxurious velvet cloth. In this artwork the flower is host to a busy group of ladybugs who are enjoying the bright morning sunshine. The blurred background is a sandstone rock garden, with magenta Pacific Coast daises and green fronds from Balga grass plants (referred to as Australian Black Boys). The colours of the flannel flower buds are subtle with soft greens and shades of light blue grey. This native flower has a simplicity to its colours, making it easy to understand why it’s valued for giving a pleasing contrast to brighter flowers like the daisy.

It’s a pretty flower that’s been favoured by Sydney siders since colonisation and has been used as a floral emblem in artwork for centuries. Residents living in the Warringah area of Sydney would recognise the flower as it was used as the emblem from 1994 - before the recent council merger in 2017.

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I have taken the long road to discover that painting and photography can sit side by side, for me painting is my first meaningful creative outlet. I use my photography to inspire my artwork and I hope my love of composition, subject and light come through in my artwork.

I was born in Papua New Guinea and lived on a remote rubber plantation before moving to Sydney in 1971 at the age of 7. I was finding it hard adjusting to the city and my mother encouraged me to take up oil painting.

Having won an art competition when I was 10, the judges recommended that I study at the local TAFE on a Saturday morning. I completed one term but felt out of place with students who were all over 16 years old, so I did not continue. (I was also a TV junkie, we had no TV in Papua, and staying at TAFE meant missing out on Hey Hey It’s Saturday.)

It took me 40 years to rediscover painting.

The one constant in my work is to find a new project and during my break from painting I have been a project manager in Information Technology. This kept me in a world with projects, and here too I learnt that even the smallest piece of data contributes its meaning towards each information system. The other constant motivating me in life is to finish a project so I can start a new one.

My creative drive comes from knowing that each brush stroke I make contributes its meaning towards the completed work. What inspires me about art is how the smallest brush strokes, when added together, can radiate a meaning for the person who gazes at the painting far beyond the meaning of each brush stroke.

I aim to do my best in each project and try to avoid, at all cost, the haunting feeling I get when I leave a project unresolved. Even to this day I still think of my unfinished painting of a sailing boat peeping out behind photographic developing chemicals back in 1979. I was 15 then and my easel had been replaced by a camera and darkroom. A part of me still needed to finish the oil painting, but photography filled the void, so the unfinished artwork was thrown away in a frenzied darkroom clean out before my HSC exams.