Forty-Four Years of Dirt, Paint, and Devotion: Why I Still Chase the Wild

As an artist, I am happily, hopelessly addicted. For 44 years, my life has been dictated by light, weather, and the sensory overload of the Australian bush. From my studio in Pearl Beach—hemmed in by the sandstone face of Mount Ettalong, the ancient trees of the local Arboretum, and the crashing Pacific—nature doesn’t just invite inspiration; it demands it.

My upcoming exhibition, Australia Wild, opening at The Garden Gallery inside the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, on October 1st, is the culmination of this lifelong obsession. It features tree-scapes of the Central Coast—the contorted, muscular limbs of angophoras, towering gums, explosive gymea lilies, and delicate flannel flowers—juxtaposed against raw, dust-caked outback canvases painted on site during three massive, nomadic loops around Australia with husband John, my easel strapped to my camping gear and Johns bike on top of our vehicle.

Painting en plein air (in the open air) with oils or experimenting with ancient molten encaustic wax isn’t a passive hobby; it is a full-contact sport. It means fighting the wind to keep a canvas standing, picking desert flies out of wet oil paint, and watching the shadows change faster than your brush can move.
This October marks a deeply personal milestone for me. I am celebrating an unbroken 19-year tradition of exhibiting within the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney. I started under the historic glass of The Palm House back in 2008, and now this year marks my third inside The Garden Gallery.

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This is my home ground!! The place of much happiness and beauty. Just lately I have been using a palette knife for most of my work and loving the difference, the challenge of the new!

GAR

The experience of a Kimberley cruise from Darwin to Broome is on the bucket list of many retirees and so it was on mine. It was magical and exciting, day after day. My new works are inspired by the Kimberley’s colour of the water and the towering and tumbling rocks, the reflections in that lucid water, the waterfalls, the excitement of being under them, the birds and the crocodiles. It is indeed a vast archaelogical paradise, an unspoilt wilderness, where we left nothing but our footprints, to be washed way by the huge tides. Adventurers and grey nomads have always loved the colourful outback of the Kimberley as well, all the gorgeous gorges along the Gibb River Road, the Bungles, the Ord River and Lake Argyle are some of the favourites. As a couple John and I traversed all these places, weeks at a time, setting up our tent and then John riding his bike whilst I stood before my easel painting ‘en plein air’. Back home I painted larger works in acrylics and oils and now in Encaustic as well. Even now I create new works from my photos of those trips.

For more OUTBACK paintings from my exhibition click here and ENCAUSTICS click here