April 2025

Looks like about eight new works since the last post…

Grey Cloud Study

Oils on canvas 30 x 24 (inches today)

This is a “study”. Unfinished. As I was scrubbing in a bit of colour; mostly greys this time, to get rid of the white priming, I noticed a creature emerging; part insect, part bandicoot, in the clouds.

It seemed a pity to be sensible and eliminate it, so I didn’t.

 I embellished it with dark squiggley bits which hung down and engaged the treetops.

And, um, that’s where I left it.

Little White cloud

Oils on canvas 32” x 42”

Midday in Big Bush . A little white cloud presides over some fanciful arrangements of shadows and sunlit patches. Some departures from realism occurring at the edges.  

Grey Box and Cough Bush

Oils on canvas 24” x 36”

Cassinia laevis. Said to cause coughing in sensitive humans. When flowering; which is quite prolonged (and not very pretty) it smells pleasant enough, but yes, causes sinus problems, and yes, that coughing for which it gets its common name. Crushing the leaves releases another pleasant, characteristic aroma which would go well in bushwhacker soap and candles.

Anyway a large patch has grown up along one of my favourite walking tracks in Big Bush where it was never seen previously.

I leaned a few trees in front of the whitish blossoms as if they are about to cough and sneeze… ?

Cirrous Tree oh

Oils on canvas 32” x 42”

This one took a lot of time and just a trace of exasperation.

I set out to create a “bad” composition, and run with it.

I sometimes feel that making “good” compositions is a bit of a cliché.

So I just took some nice cirrus clouds (that I really saw and photographed) and put three rather gross Grey Box trunks in front; clunk, clunk, clunk.

It was a very enjoyable job; but like I said, a bit difficult at times. Scale and textures made me work frenetically.

Garden of Obsessives

Oils on canvas 24” x 36”

I have a garden of certain rainforest trees and shrubs that can survive our winters. Tropicals have to live indoors, and some ultra tropicals survive only in my imagination and this painting.

Herewith just a few of my favourites.  I will have to do a much larger painting one day to fit them all in. Please note that I am a leaf-shape obsessive.

Cape Trib Fanpalms.

Oils on canvas 32” x 42”

Licuala ramsayi. Once you take the ferry across the Daintree River in far north Queensland you will start seeing these exquisite fan palms. Cape Tribulation was so named by Captain Cook after he dinged a hole in his ship, the Endeavour, nearby.

And two pastels:

Crown/Cloud Dialogue

23” x 16.5”

A quick, fairly scruffy pastel of something I saw.

Seen it all Before

23” x 16.5”

I’ve been living in Big Bush for 55 years!

This black cypress pine tree must have died in the “15 year drought” we had a few years ago.

It’s on one of my walking paths and I would have walked and cycled past it hundreds of times since it was a healthy young sapling.

 I can remember, when I was a very little boy, my parents and uncles and aunts talking with horror and disgust about that awful Adolf Hitler.

 Now I’ve lived to see it happening again.

And now I have an announcement to make:

 I am having a small exhibition of mostly recent works in Coolamon soon.

We will be hanging the show later this week and the official opening will be 19^thApril; Easter Saturday.

At 3pm.

 The venue is a shop called Quarrion; 114 Cowabbie St Coolamon NSW 2701.

Everyone is invited, and encouraged to bring friends…

The show will be hanging for several weeks. It’s always open on Saturdays; but sometimes also Fridays and Sundays

Current times can be found on Instagram quarrion.coolamon