Patterns left behind in the sand have always fascinated me and I have a collection of photos from way back in the 1990’s! With all the estuaries here in the Tasman area of New Zealand, I’m adding to that collection, and spending time delving into their intricate patterns – always so different!
A newly completed painting from my New Zealand ‘Estuary Series’. I seem to spend many hours sitting staring at the water’s edge, and absorbing the patterns left behind by the tides. Each day is different! I sketch and roughly paint what I see each visit, and these eventually inspire my acrylic and mixed media paintings.
Click HERE to view details of this painting.
Now that I’m living in New Zealand, I have a whole world of different inspiration to paint. My initial fascination has been the local estauries and their tidal patterns. Having spent 15 years in the Mediterranean, the tidal movement of the oceans in the Tasman region are a fascination and total mystery to me. Each moment I spend sitting at the edge of the bay opens up a whole new watery landscape to sketch, and paint and lose myself in. These two paintings are the first in a series based on these estauries.
SOLD – I loved working on this painting as we spend the first full winter in Greece for many years. Lockdown has kept us close to home, but how lucky are we to have a gorgeous long beach right on the doorstep. I’ve wandered along it in many weathers, and the ocean is often ominous and crashing. This painting though, portrays it somewhere in between that and the usual glorious calm blue it usually is during summer.
BOTH SOLD – Hot off the press! These two 40 x 40cm boards were a deliberate change in colour palette and can be purchased as a diptych, although they are perfect just on their own! In this series, I’m delving into marks and shapes of what I imagine are under these vast oceans around us. The Mediterranean, which is right at my door, is probably a little more deceptive than the surf beaches of New Zealand and Australia which continuously churn up various types and shades of seaweeds, but nevertheless, there must still be some interesting stuff in it’s Hidden Depths!
This painting has had many iterations, but my desire was to convey blue water and islands, perhaps resting points, somewhere in the world.
When travelling recently in New Zealand, we visited the Wai-o-tapu (Maori for sacred waters) Geothermal area, just outside Rotorua. Within this was a geothermal pool called Artists Palette – well, what a perfect subject matter for abstract painting ideas! The colours were out of this world, and all created by the various gases bubbling in these pools. I took just a small section of colour as my inspiration for this one, and it is just one of my paintings based on this wonderful area.
June 2018
This painting is portraying, in simple form, the small Greek town in the Peloponnese, where I currently spend a good deal of each year. Koroni, like a lot of small coastal towns in Greece, has a lovely buzzing harbour, with whitewashed buildings spilling down from the surrounding hills.
The painting is in acrylic, and in a new technique for me, as I explore different ways of capturing more abstract landscapes.
Details of this painting can be found in Gallery – Greece.
This little painting was done whilst staying in in Skiathos in July. Its such a beautiful island, and there’s nothing more spectacular than arriving in the port and seeing the lovely town slowly crawling up the hill, the borzti and the nearby bays with their white buildings and church towers.