Here’s a little bit about me and my work …

I’m really a quiet, reserved sort of person so I find it hard to pen this. But here goes:
My interest in art stems from childhood. I’m a country girl – my Grandmother was an artist and I spent my early years on her dairy farm in New South Wales, Australia. I was in the Brownies and received my Art Badge at 11 years old.

We then moved around the world, living in the UK and New Zealand before returning to Australia. At high school I studied art. After leaving school, day-to-day life took over, and it wasn’t until some decades later that I reverted to the art I love.

Why am I attracted to intense, bright colours? I think it’s the weird combination of my genes. In a way I’m the ultimate mongrel, with ancestors from Italy, England, Malaysia, the West Indies and the Torres Straight Islands. I really ought to have brown eyes and brown skin, but instead I’m blonde with blue eyes.

My art springs from the subconscious, often the result of dreaming. I’m more creative after jet lag, when I’d wake up in the middle of the night and start painting – often for hours at a time.

Then there’s the influence of travel and exposure to diverse cultures with their dramatically different sights, smells, landscapes and light. My stepfather lived in China for much of the 1940s, and I’ve spent time in many different European and Asian countries.

Living for years in Noosa on Queensland’s Pacific coast inspired many paintings of the area. Not so much the busy, upmarket resort itself, but the wilder areas on the north shore of the Noosa River. Unpopulated places with only 4-wheel-drive access like 40 Mile Beach, The Everglades, Lake Cootharaba, the Cooloola National Park and Fraser Island.

I don’t have any particular, defining style. I’ve painted ‘traditional’ pictures, such as Grouse and Scottish mountains, right through to disturbing paintings of blood and oil – a premonition of the first Gulf War. I love texture in a piece. The vast majority of my paintings are ‘touchy-feely’.

I used to live as a bit of a hermit in a rainforest on top of Tamborine Mountain in subtropical Queensland, painting away as the urge took me. Since then, I’ve moved closer to Brisbane and continued with my painting, also doing Craftwork and, more recently, writing – as you can see under the MyBooks menu.