Self with Past Ed. 1 of 10

This print has softly torn edges and is box framed with with dark reddish square section timber.

I like to explore spaces and time and memory – the ambiguity of reality. We understand this space although we may not have experienced it personally.

While I sometimes work from my own photographs, my digital work is more often developed from my paintings and drawings, as in this print.

“Self with Past” uses self portrait drawings and parts of my own studio works combining them to give a sense of time and history. There is a sense of landscape and space and sound in this work. These are all influences on my work.

This image is printed onto 315gsm Innova Softex Fine Art inkjet paper using archival pigment printing inks. I have taken images, and parts of images, from my own studio painting, drawing and printmaking, and have reinvented them to produce this New Media work. I like to reduce any visual “computer” quality in my work, and to maintain some evidence of the artist’s hand in the making of the original artwork.

My prints are not computer generated but are the result of using the computer merely as a tool to create an extension of my studio work.

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My work is mostly painting, drawing and mixed media. As the daughter of a cabinetmaker and a creative homemaker, I have always been interested in art and design and making things. After leaving school I originally studied and worked as an Industrial Designer but soon made my way into Graphic Design jobs and eventually into Tertiary Art and Design teaching. I currently work full time in my Mittagong Studio as a professional artist, exhibiting in Regional NSW and Victoria, and in Melbourne and Sydney.
I often work in series where I have several works happening at the same time. I like to explore one subject or idea by creating as many works as I need before exhausting that idea. I love experimenting and, although this was a good attribute for teaching painting and design, it has also resulted in my portfolio comprising of many directions in my work over the years. I just love making art.
My work ranges from abstract to expressive and impressionistic. Nature's patterns and textures are common themes where I interpret rather than copy my subject. Important landscapes include the desert, the bush and the coast. Unfashionable and untidy are appealing! I enjoy seeking a visual language that interprets the landscape that I experience. I "hear" and "feel" the landscape, as well as "view" it.
The subjects of still life and portraiture are reliable backstops that I keep returning to. There's always the kitchen, the domestic scene and dead flowers. They are static and always there for me. Portraits and the figure are of great interest, and I regularly participate in the practice of life drawing.
I regularly return to intangible subjects such as sound, noise and silence (what would a sound look like - how can I visually describe it?), smell, taste, touch, unfamiliar language, time, memory and history. My works expose my interest in colour theory and design elements, leading me to reduce any recognisable image in order to place undeniable emphasis on the emotive content. Such works can be more “difficult” to view and more challenging to create. There is a delayed reaction in their making, as if they need sort of incubation time to distill a little.
I develop much of my work in the studio referencing my sketches, photos, my written descriptions and thoughts, and, above all, my memory and knowledge.