Early morning bite
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L.B. Elliott, a marvelous painter in the ilk of W.G.Wiles. He in turn had been inspired by W.G. and Errol Boyley and so a meshing of impressionists and loose realists formed the platform of my early work.
I would classify myself as an impressionist/ realist.
However the greatest infl uence I believe was from Dino Parravano, the great Italian artist who lived in South Africa and now lives in the U.S.A. I was fortunate to spend some time with him and his most lasting advice was never to become known as one who paints the sea, or only paints wildlife
etc. “Paint anything and everything, you’ll enjoy some subjects more than others but you’ll learn most when you’re out of your comfort zone.’’
I tend to find myself selecting subjects based more on the quality of light than the subject itself. I have always enjoyed the way that Adriaan Bosoff makes something of an otherwise unlikely subject by also
making use of light.
When travelling my camera is always at hand. I only use my own photographs and although they are important, they only give me a structural reference.
Nothing can replace the personal experience of having been there. At the risk of sounding over the top, I need to “smell the dust’’ as it were, to be able to contribute that extra dimension that will hopefully be the soul of the work, separating it from
a purely mechanical reproduction of someone
else’s experience. It’s also a beautiful excuse to take yourself off to exquisite places and in reality my trips to Central Africa and Zimbabwe etc have yielded work that would never otherwise been
contemplated.
Inspiration comes from my last painting. If that happened to be a “beacon’’ work, then I can’t wait to get back to the easel, if on the other hand it was a bit ordinary, I need to get back to try to recapture the freshness that was lacking. Nice to
know that there is no final destination in painting,only the journey.
I run 4 day workshops from my studio in Queenstown, but also travel to other centres where bigger groups make it more practical for me to go to them.
I have held one man exhibitions at the Crake
Gallery in Johannesburg, the Lindburg Art
Foundation in Cape Town, the Hartebeespoort
Dam and numerous centres in the Eastern Cape
and Wild Coast. The 2nd to 5th June will be my 4th consecutive exhibition at the Nashua Art in the Park in Pietermaritzburg and an exciting “one man’’is booked at the Belling Gallery in Port Elizabeth in April 2011. Commissions make up much of my work.
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