Special and exciting!
Looking forward to painting in the warm!

Next July join me and a fabulous yoga teacher, along with Anna, your host at the beautiful Vila Nilaya in Bali for 6 days of luxurious fun and special look after your creative self and pamper with pools and yoga.

Check out the details, bookings being taken NOW!

This wild wooly weather has made me take stock and finally pull my thoughts together enough to update this website!

I actually apologise for the delay and hope you enjoy all the new things on offer, from a new small collection on show at Linton and Kay Mandoon till August the 27th, to new works.

Workshops on offer for this term as well as news of a very exciting workshop retreat in Bali… I know, warm and sunny! But hold your horses it is not until next July. It is though time to give it some thought as they book out quickly and two places are already booked.

There is another incentive, the “Earlybird” discount.

Full details and booking: www.villanilayabalibeach.com

More currently Studio Sessions are starting are just starting up for this term and there are 3 places available in the Tuesday Sessions.

Eight Session 10-3 ending on the last week of term September 18th.

This term we looked at landscape through the eyes of some West Australian Artists. It was enlightening and freeing to have a different view of our world and liberating to have the pallet chosen as well as quite an eye opener to use different brushes and styles. The results were sensational and even the artists not the favorites led to some stunning admissions of pleasure!

A two night Lino Design/Print workshop was held this term at the Stirling Street Arts Centre that was a lot of fun. Once the fear left the participants there was a lot of fun and some pretty impressive results, along with ArtGeo workshops on the same theme. I have had a great time teaching last term and thank everyone for their adventurous spirit, really look forward to engaging with you all this term.

As for my work I have managed to fit a bit of painting in!

I found myself a bit stuck in my ways and needed to jump out of the comfortable space I had been in.

So armed with some new colour palettes and materials and a big bunch of dead flowers I began again.

Life had been showing me in lots of ways the inevitability of age and the joys that come with it. An ageing Mum and a mirror in my bathroom were all too clearly evidence of time marching along. My way of coming to terms with it is to find all the beauty possible in things that we cannot change.

My Studio Sessions class gave me a huge bunch of protea and banksia, they were gorgeous. I photographed them fresh and drew them a lot. It wasn’t until I was stuck, many months later when looking for something to get stuck into drawing, I rediscovered them.

I gave myself some new rules so I could not solve problems that arose in the usual way, you know, like when you cook and something is missing…you reach often for the same solutions. Time to ignore them and move on, so armed with a new range of colours to choose from and the process shaken up a bit off I went!

The work has been a joy to paint and I have loved the whole process and the finishing of work that is still mine but has challenged me and taken me a little further in the journey for the perfect painting. I do know that will never happen, and god forbid the day it does, because I will be done, and then what?!

On the topic of change, there has been a lot this past year. My husband has semi retired so time is moving at a different pace and in someway more flexible, in others hard for me to work out. Still it is more good than bad and luckily he has a new project so the world is not tipped all upside down!

We have a new baby, Ruby. She is a fur baby of the miniature schnauzer type, so lots of time playing and training and generally loving the new addition to our life.

Things to look forward to this year keep coming, show at Linton and Kay Mandoon now on, working towards exhibition here in the studio in May next year for the Dardanup Art Trail, lots of fab workshops coming up and some time to keep on learning.

Enjoy.