Born and raised in small town New Zealand, Ōtaki, Hāwera, Levin, I studied History at Victoria University. I did not study art, I have no formal training. I saw and appreciated great art for the first time in 2001, when I visited Paris. There I saw the Moreau Museum, Cluny, and Picasso Museums. It was this trip that sparked my interest in painting. I currently have a home studio in Mt Eden, Auckland that I’ve enjoyed since 2014.
 
My paintings contemplate a specific personal experience. The movement between feeling, a thought it may evoke, or never realise. An irreconcilable tension between connection and distance, or inner overwhelm meeting that which over powers from the outside.
 
My work often uses the golden ratio. Through that sufficient and essential organisation, I can hold doubt, grief, despair. But I can also hold an expanse of freedom, hope, the sublime. There is the gentle push and pull of feeling in my paintings. A viewer may sense this, recall a feeling and experience, and ideally that would be different each time a painting is encountered. 
 
I use few colours, they are not intense, but might be deep or heavy. Usually the oils are stressed by thinning mediums. The tooth of the canvas and primer are intentionally incorporated. Revealing their own nature is both to provide material honesty in the work, and to play with layers of feeling. They are not ornamenting colour for a bare wall, rather, there is a dance to find, and contemplate, in each painting.
 
I take inspiration from artists that provide a useful frame for questions I am interested in. Agnes Martin, her dream like sources for paintings and her rejection of ideas. Lee Ufan for his love of rocks. The sublime seascape photography of Hiroshi Sugimoto. Rothko, for holding the drivers of death, sensuality, tension, irony, play, chance, and hope, in his painting. Where ideas provide interest, purpose, connection, and defence, is it possible to paint through to their abandonment? To do this while still participating in the world, or without tipping into an irrecoverable nihilism? 
 
Artists like Colin McCahon are of course an influence and inspiration. Other sources of inspiration range from Caravaggio, for his subjects and their isolation in black, to Natalia Goncharova, in particular her rayonist work. In addition to fine art, the tapestries of the Musée de Cluny, steel work of Richard Serra, and Rock drill of Epstein.  My inspiration is greatest however, here, with the unique light, colours, and landscapes we enjoy in New Zealand.