I had the great honour of being selected to spend six months in the Musée du Louvre to develop a new body of work around fragments of religious paintings of the XVth century. Here is a work in progress in front of Josse Lieferinxe's crucifixion. 

I tried to find indications of spiritualism (as opposed to religion) through the analysis and retranscription of this highly codified iconography. This particular painting explored the flow of the Christ's Perichoresis, the undulating drapé which encircles the body.

I found hope and uplift in the volutes that this cloth created.

Oil on board, diametre 400mm,  2012

Painting en plein air, Paris, Normandy and Giens 

Oil on wood, 2013

"The imagination flourishes. When it can transport itself to a location fixed in the description of some far off other place outside the everyday.

Five hundred, even two hundred years ago, there were such places on earth where Europeans had not been, exotic places at best described and illustrated in the journals, or traced on the coastline maps of explorers. Cook's discovery of Australia's East coast located a missing continent and brought to light the existence of a place filled with fabulous creatures and exotic fauna. A place for the European imagination to go. 

Today, it is not so easy for the imagination to voyage, at least not on our globe. It has all become by degrees, a used and prosaic place. Our most intrepid explorers are now micro chips and radio transmitters, with little atomic hearts, heading out towards the heliosphere and sending back digital encodings of new worlds made of fantastic vivid colours - colours made all the more vivid by imaginative enhancement. It is here that the imagination can still project itself, a space for the minds eye."

Michael Markham, Melbourne 1989

Tesselation and fractal formations in cristal. This series is painted with oil on crushed cans and wooden panels, Paris, 2013

The crushed can series perhaps grow from my interest in  artists such as  Rauschenberg, using the found, used. An object with a long but contemporary history imprinted in them – their sophisticated engineering, their printing, the finest our culture produces then promptly discards. That they are found and abused reflects back on the culture we live in… "throw away." My pleasure is to place something timeless on them – a landscape or a woman in a burqa or an animal that is so far from the idea of garbage. I have to admit, I love the surfaces and the scale and the limitations; you can only do so much on these pieces. They have to be clear.  Using that surface, I allow the subject matter to generate new and different meanings. The iron age megaliths like Io Pan, which shows a number of wind generators behind the large  standing rock, is like a message in a bottle… but rather a can. I found this on my street run over a thousand times by trucks and buses and cars. There's also a link back to painters who worked on cigar boxes, that impoverished supports, a kind of arte povera of my own.

oil on aluminium, 2010

Using recycled objects as a canvas, adding another layer with gesso and paint to create a wearable talisman. 

These elements were exhibited at SALON94 in New York City, July 2014 as part of a group show curated by fashion guru Duro Olowu. The exhibition was called MORE MATERIAL and included several of my wearable sculptures as well as recent paintings. 

More information on the exhibition is available on the Exhibitions page. 

oil on can series, 2011

Oil on wood and metal, 30cmx30cm painted in Esparon, France Summer 2012

Studio is inside and outside. France.

Series of gouaches I've been painting in the studio in Paris over the last few weeks. I'm trying to convey the personality of these rocks, looking at them as little faces, rather than nature morte. More images coming...

Meditative focus on slow, deliberate illusions. 

Series painted in 2007-2008 in Montparnasse, Paris.

This was for a show held in Sydney at Helen Stephens Gallery, July 2008.

Oil on board, 30x30, diptychs.