Sometimes I don’t get a chance to visit my bush studio for weeks on end as I live in the city. When I do get there, it’s an interesting experience to follow a path in the forest to enter a roomy studio with familiar and large paintings that seem to be made by someone else. (Generally I feel most “good” artists are the best at opening themselves to that creativity that surrounds us.) So the bush studio feels like aRead more
Posts filed in: leaving the city
The lake
Those of you that read this blog know that I return to lakes again and again. Is it just another place to take photograghs? Maybe. In reality, I travel to lakes again and again because for me they represent all I feel alienated from, living in the city. It’s not just living in the city. It is all the associated dysfunctionalities of living a city life, despite the obvious positives of life in a city. I believe there is aRead more
The Retreat
Having lived in the city all my life, and having experienced the archetypal cities of the world while travelling, I have found that my favourite creative space is one close to nature. I have even noticed how the work I do out of my city studio is different to that done in the Retreat House. My dream is to one day allow access to my Retreat House (under some kind of arrangement) to emerging artists. There is something in theRead more
Haunted by the North
I am haunted by seeing the northern edge of my country, particularly the Kimberley region and Kakadu. You can travel the world and see the great centres of human culture and that’s fine but the Deep North is something else. There was no road access to the lodge we stayed at in the Kimberley…so we sat crammed in a light plane and watched the miles and miles of plains and rivers pass by below. Once there, we spent days exploringRead more
Thoughts of Finding the Quiet
Life these days in the cities of eternal business and busy-ness is inherently depletive of meaning. It only takes a short trip away into the wilder zones outside the city to realize there are many places of quiet. Or at least places where the sounds are less human : the sound of the waves, the hum of the forest, the silence of the forest at night. We are often offered now techniques of meditation and contemplation, in an effort toRead more
