I am an artist who lives at Rhyll on Phillip Island, where I share Jandi Studio with my wife Joy Brentwood. Surrounded as we are by the beauty of the bay, the boats and the birds, this is a wonderful and inspiring place to be an artist.
During a scientific career as a mycologist, I did many technical drawings of microfungi in pen and ink. Artistically I started painting landscapes and seascapes in pastel and watercolour. Increasingly, however, the pen has lured me back into drawing the natural world.
Moving to Phillip Island has re-ignited my love of boats and drawn me into the wonderful world of waterbirds and honeyeaters and other plants and animals. The combination of pen and ink with watercolour provides a distinctive way of treating these subjects.
Recently I have discovered the joy of working in ink and charcoal on gessoed panels. These are wonderful to work on, but impose their own challenges and limitations. These panels have encouraged me to keep my drawings minimalistic, with a simple strong subject and minimal detail. One of these drawings, ‘A Mooring near the Pier’, won Best Drawing at the Artists Society of Phillip Island Easter Exhibition, 2019.
I am inspired to draw, as much as anything else, by the technical challenges of turning a complex array of visual inputs into a single well-expressed idea rendered mostly in black and white. I relish the permanency of ink, and the consequent absence of second chances. Make a mark and learn to live with it!
Every art work is an experiment; a pitched battle between my abilities and inabilities to control composition, colour and tone and the technical aspects of the medium being used. If the result is unexpected, so much the better.
Recent Exhibitions and Awards
• AGRA Autumn Seasonal, 2021, Commended
• Artist Society of Phillip Island, Easter online 2021 – Highly Commended
• Overwintering Project and exhibition – Burnie, Tasmania 2020, Mornington
Regional Gallery 2020, and Adelaide, SA 2021.
• Rhyll Art Show, Rhyll Hall, March 2020
• Exhibition Space Phillip Island, Pop-Up Exhibition, Cowes, Jan 2020
• ‘Round About, The Circle Show’, Gecko Gallery, Fish Creek, May-June 2019 –
invited participant.
• Corinella Art Show, June 2019
• Pakenham Art Show, May 2019
• Art Society of Phillip Island, Easter Art Show, April 2019, Best Drawing
• ‘Synergy’, Joint exhibition with Joy Brentwood, Meeniyan Art Gallery, April
2019
• Phillip Island and San Remo Rotary Art Show, 2019 – highly commended
• ‘Winter Solstice’ Exhibition, ArtSpace Wonthaggi, June 2018
• ‘ClimArt’, ArtSpace Wonthaggi, May-June 21018
• ‘Really Rhyll Art Show’, Rhyll Wooden Boat Festival, March 2-4 2018
• AGRA President’s Challenge 2017, ‘The Future’, July 2017, Highly
Commended
• “Really Rhyll Art Show”, Rhyll, Phillip Island, 11-14 March 2016
• ‘Drawing, the Essential Art 2016’ (Kenneth Jack Memorial Exhibition),
Finalist
• ‘Pigment and Pen’, joint exhibition with Joy Brentwood, Quadrant