My new solo show opened on Friday 25th at Lethbridge Gallery, Australia, it will be on display until the 13th of October
“Southern Apollonian” Oil on ACM, 120x60cm
Shots from the opening night 25th September 2026
Poetically, I have always been drawn to the idea of life force – the fire animating life. I see gesture or movement as the visual expression of this, and this has been an organising pressure on my interests in painting and drawing for many years. I conceive of this as a certain tension – both an internal negotiation of diverse impulses and an external tension with the restrictions of the world. Presocratic philosopher Heraclitus turns these tensions into something valuable, an inspiring sacred truth, rather than a cause for frustration.
“Chrysalis” Oil on ACM, 60x60cm
In this collection we have a variety of elements placed into tension: Emotional states such as depression, courage, anger and peace are juxtaposed. Landscapes are invaded by figures who make solid the spirit of that place, and figures expand into landscapes from their gesture. Painterliness is relieved at times with more refined modelling. Narrative is in tension with more abstract symbolism. Observational painting speaks to abstracted, intuitively derived forms.
“The Bow of Heraclitus” Oil on Linen, 141x141cm
This collection represents a variety of forays into ways of expressing meaning, fragments from my unruly imagination, but driven by some common thread of holding human life-force as a sacred fire.
“Inner Flight” Oil on ACM, 58x39cm
Heraclitus celebrated the irreducible flux and tension of the world as creatively generative:
People do not understand how that which is at variance with itself agrees with itself. There is a harmony in the bending back, as in the cases of the bow and the lyre. (Heraclitus, fragment 51)
Without the competition among various drives, goals and conclusions, the individual would lack their particular fire, their eros. Without the resistance from the world to that eros, life cannot express its vitality. These tensions, across the metaphorical string, power the flight of the arrow or sing forth the musical note. I have long treated gesture, or embodied intentionality and interiority, as the central factor of my figure work – chasing a feeling of the life force of both the model and that of the artist's hand. I admire the rhythmic, energetic rendering style of artists such as Rubens, Jacob Jordaens and Rodin. For me, these artists point to a restless spirit seeking to throw itself against restriction, to grow and explore into its potential.
“The Union of Opposites” Oil on ACM, 80x52cm
The various works of this collection are not neatly harmonised. Rather they are fragments from my own fire – from my diverse obsessions, drives and discoveries. They are somewhat in tension with each other visually and psychologically. Yet in this tension is their harmony, or at least a common tremulous thread I am trying to hold. And this is another meaning of Heraclitus' metaphor of the bow: the union of opposites.
“The Weight of Light” Oil on ACM 60 x 42cm
Opposites rely on each other to be known, and in this eclectic collection the Dionysian frenzy gains balance and meaning from its opposition to Apollonian rationality and optimism. Despair gains meaning in tension with courage. Time and motion are juxtaposed with the static. Abstract psychological forms, derived from a process of automatic drawing, flow out of the representational nude. Landscapes emerge from figures, and figures in turn are generated by landscapes.
“Muse-Woven” Oil on Linen, 60x120cm
Heraclitus speaks of the continual flux of the world: of one element dying into the next, and considers fire as the fundamental stuff of the universe. The physicist would say he was anticipating ideas of the equivalence of matter and energy by well over 2000 years. Yet I think he was pointing to fire in a poetic sense as much as a physical one, to the energies of the psyche to engage in a wrestle with the world, as well as the courage to "search in oneself" (fragment 101). And so for Heraclitus, while "strife is the father of all", providing the generative tension, he also advocates for temperance, for care and reserve as one explores both inwards and outwards. In Heraclitus I sense the wildness and wisdom to question both self and world, and seek a harmony in it after all.
“Sea of Clouds, Huang Shan” Oil on ACM, 60x90cm
The experience of the world is fire: relentless flux, and the tension between forces and wills. And perhaps the wisdom to navigate these tensions with grace.
“Pneuma” Oil on ACM, 61x51cm
“Black Candle (Between Courage and Despair)”
Graphite on paper 59x42cm
“Ouroborean Sonata” Oil on Linen 100x100cm
“Punctuated Equilibrium”
3D printed ABS, plaster, acrylic paint, timber 70x20x20cm