'The totality of the picture comments on the totality of what I am. The greater the picture the more complete this process is. Process, the energy in being, the refusal of finality, which is not the same thing as the refusal of completeness, sets art, all art, apart from the end-stop world that is always calling 'Time Please!'.

(Winterson, Jeanette, 'Art Objects' 1995, Random House, UK, pg 19.)

When I connect with the landscape I immerse myself within it physically, spiritually and intellectually. Through my painting, with this experience and understanding, I explore the ‘sense of place’ of that landscape.

This ‘sense of place’ is informed by my drawings; by the photographs and by the live specimens I have collected on site. When I camp and hike in the Australian bush I bear witness to the passage of time there. I observe the changing light and weather, and the symphony of sounds and smells, the shifting energies of the landscape.

Following the tradition of working on site, in this external landscape, I am able to connect with a deeper internal level of being. This is where the internal meets with the external - the dialogue of my work. The discussion then becomes the basis of the act of painting.

In my studio the dialogue is transformed through the physical process of painting. The subject matter becomes a catalyst for a conversation about the experience of the ‘sense of place’.

In these works, there is a departure point in the process; the paintings have become constructed worlds rather than depictions of place. I have taken the ‘sense of place’ and used it to inform my personal interpretation of how that ‘place’ looks or feels from my own spiritual and intellectual viewpoint. In this way the work is a surreal space, another world constructed from the experiences sensed in the physical world.

The landscape always shapes and influences our existence; culturally; physically; spiritually. If art that talks about a connection to landscape, to nature, to the soul, to the mysterious or the intangible, has an underlying urgency about what it is to be human, then this is the purpose of my journey.

Here in these works I seek to make better sense of my humanity through my interaction with the Australian landscape. I paint to experience this ‘place’ and who I am within it.