Bath Towels, 2024

In this painting, I worked from a film photo, applying the nostalgic hues of film photography to the never-ending task of hanging out the washing. I stripped back the detail of the towels towards the end of the painting process so that the bright colours and joyful, bold blocking of the towels were winning against any sense of temporality or diminishing possibility with the reach of the shadows. I often paint local travel scenes, playing with the idea of experiencing familiar places with the wonder of a tourist, and I’ve tried to give that feel a bit here in a different way, working with distance to create detachment, as though walking through someone else’s yard.

I am a self-taught painter, and have been playing around with still-life, domestic and local travel scenes for the past few years. At first, I taught myself to paint in the style of a woodblock print, blocking out shapes to create an image, so a lot of my work is flat but I’m playing more and more with depth and distance as I go along, and learning to really look at a scene.

Inspiration for my still-life works comes from both food and the ritual of sharing meals, and I often ‘set the table’ to tell the story of a certain person, place or time. In terms of domestic or interior scenes, I’m often painting scenes that speak to everyday routines, like swimming via a scene of bathers drying, and forever looking at satisfying shapes of well-designed utilitarian objects like chairs and or a Bialetti, and patterns in light, shadows, nature, architecture and textiles. I’m drawn to the idea of hyper-local travel too; I read travel writing and apply it to a way of looking at my own neighbourhood.

I’ve have self-managed two exhibitions to date. I was a finalist in the 2020 Little Things Art Prize at Saint Cloche gallery, have had a mention in Galah magazine’s Art Scene segment (issue 3, 2021), and was listed in Inside Out magazine’s Affordable Art Guide (January 2024).