Hotel Vera Ballarat

December 2022

Around and hour and a half from Melbourne, Australia, in the regional town of Ballarat is a beautiful little boutique hotel called Hotel Vera.

Each suite features the work of a different Australian artist and I am delighted to have my work hung in the Lonarch suite. Also, this suite is pet friendly and I can personally vouch is 100% luxury for both dogs and humans!

Merge: Opening Event 13/04/22

Merge is a body of oil paintings and collages continuing my exploration of abstraction as a visual language to communicate a multiplicity of meanings.

In the paintings, layers of paint are built up and removed through sanding. It’s a slow process of give and take, presence and absence that emerges over time, giving meaning to the work beyond an aesthetic experience. The remaining residue records the history of the painting itself. No predetermined direction of the outcome exits in my mind during its creation, but each mark or layer a felt response, an improvised response, to what has gone before. Sometimes whole passages of (almost) resolved work are sacrificed beneath further layering. Sometimes a trace of that history is left barely visible. Often, what is being resolved is the relationship of one area of the painting with another. How do they come together, relate and react? This can be a question of edge: Do they butt up against one another or do they dissolve into each other? How does one hue, tone or mark coalesce with its juxtaposition? What is the nature of the edge? Are there clear, defined edges or do they merge? How do they merge? And when part of the painting is no longer visible, its existence is still actual and felt as it is merged and submerged as an integral part of the fabric of the work and ultimately the unity of the painting.

Made during lockdown when unable to access the studio, the collages explore the same ideas relating to edge but with a clear proclivity towards juxtaposition. Bringing together some imagery made over a decade ago with that made contemporaneously, epochs coalesce on the same plane.

In the words of Judy Chicago: “And then all that has divided us will merge”

I am delighted to have Dr Robin Kingston open this exhibition. Please join us at the opening event.