Winter Light, Lake Wendouree

Winter Light, Lake Wendouree, 2024, oil on linen, 61.5 x 91.5 cm

I've painted quite a few pictures of Lake Wendouree in Ballarat. Although I've been looking at the Lake for years, it never loses its inspiration. The colours are often luminous because of the light that washes over its surface. I was interested in having a tree dissect the picture plane, because sometimes when one's view is slightly blocked it can make you look harder at what's there. Hopefully it has resulted in a more dynamic composition.

As always, I aim to paint an atmosphere that is still or serene, like a seascape by Seurat or an interior by Gwen John, two artists whose work I've admired for a long time.  

George Seurat's painting Evening, Honfleur, 1886, 

oil on canvas with painted wooden frame, 78.3 x 94 cm

Gwen John's A Corner of the Artist's Room in Paris,1907-1909, oil on canvas, 31.2 x 24.8 cm

Bathroom Paintings

 

Sink with Running Tap, 2025, oil on canvas, 83.75 x 83.75 cm.

Bathroom, 1995, oil on canvas, 60.75 x 60.75 cm

I've always loved images of interior spaces because there is an aura of secrecy and intimacy about them. I've also loved the philosophy of making something interesting and poetic from the so-called ordinary things that surround us. The above two paintings were inspired by a number of artworks I've seen over the years. Vermeer's The Milkmaid and Lucian Freud's Two Japanese Wrestlers by a Sink have liquids that are forever being poured from a jug or running from a tap. It's like perpetual motion in paint. My two works were done 30 years apart which just goes to show that liquid streaming from a container of sorts is still an inspiring thing to paint.

Here are some artworks that have inspired my own paintings of still life and interiors and especially the two bathroom ones.

A detail of Vermeer's The Milkmaid, 1657?, oil on canvas

A detail of Lucian Freud's painting Two Japanese Wrestlers by a Sink,

1983-87, oil on canvas.

Cressida Cambell's Shelf Still Life, 2012, Woodblock, 90 x 138 5 cm