For me making art is the place to forget the pictures of language and go somewhere else, where experience is again potent and luminous and special, maybe the way it is for children.
I notice certain motifs keep repeating, I notice my work is about rhythm and energy and the human journey. I am a sailor and for me a boat sailing the ocean embodies it all.
Making art for me is a way of listening for undercurrents of interest, and having a conversation with the emerging shapes, that I hardly know but need to befriend. It is an exploration into how I create stories without words.
I have explored many different mediums. One of my favourites is encaustic wax, because it is so alchemical and messy, and smelly. Its unpredictability inspires and crushes me. Isn’t life the same. I love the sticky brilliance of printmaking and the subtlety of acrylic painting. I love the modelling potential of supersculpy and the tactile earthiness of ceramics. Like a child I want it all.
I moved back to Raglan three years ago to be with my children and grandchildren. My father grew up on the Rangitahi farm until the Great Depression. My grandfather then built a house on Wi Neera street and our family came to visit and stay weekends and holidays. As a child I was tumbled and planted right down deep in the black sands, the dunes and the wild sea of Raglan.
It is good to be developing into an artist here, because there is so much of that child in my work.