Influenced by artists such as, Peter Doig and Kaye Donachie, my landscape paintings depict pastoral and provincial scenes and situations that mingle recollections, historical events, tender encounters or furtive activities
My work is backgrounded by traditions of narrative painting and developments in a new romanticism which proposes to make, “the finite into the infinite, while recognising that it can never be realized. The romantic attitude hovers between attempt and inevitable failure with the unified pluralism of sincerity and irony (Vermeulen & Akker 2010).
“…, the (New Romantic) scene is characterized by a quite emphatic renaissance of the traditional work which manifests itself not only in recurrent revivals of painting. Numerous young artists draw unerringly on the spirit of Romanticism, on the longing for the paradisiacal, beautiful, and magical. With this development, the sense of shame at serious pictures and visual pleasures seems to have been definitely overcome”.
April 27, 2004 - Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt - Ideal Worlds – New Romanticism in Contemporary Art
Olafur Eliasson points out, “I am not afraid of the sublime...We must not be afraid of claiming a degree of ownership for it. We should allow something sublime to be right next to us in the gutter.”

The Point is part of a series of work, River Majesty, in which scenes are observed from the water, during trips along the Waikato River between Hamilton/Kirikiriroa and Taupiri.
Source material is manipulated with non-real colour and fluent gesture to bend and amplify scenery. Disquieting occurrences are often inserted to upset the idyllic.
My motivations derive from an interest in regional histories and identities and how traditions of painting from expressionism, new romanticism, impressionism, to magic realism can be drawn from and melded to produce narratives that reflect my attitudes and experiences in the land that are somewhat in tension or even contradictory. My enjoyment of a stroll down a narrow road that traverses the Hauraki Plains that I’ll return to tomorrow to watch a burn-out competition.