When I decided to study art seriously, at 20 years old, I couldn't get into an art school, so there was only one course of action to pursue. The hardest question to answer was how do you become an artist? How do you make the kind of images you see in the art books? After trying out many ways to paint pictures and without success, I travelled to London when I was 26 and saw the small painted cloud studies by John Constable which were done directly from life. It was a revelation and from that time on I have painted almost all of my pictures from life.
I didn't stay long in London so when I got back to Melbourne I painted scores of still life pictures. Almost all of them I destroyed but I kept about a dozen. At this time I couldn't paint skies, clouds or things in front of other things. In these still life paintings, very few objects overlap that much. But these few paintings are some of the ones I've kept from 40 years ago.
Still Life with Ceramic Container, Oranges, Glass and Corkscrew, 1981,
oil on masonite, 39.4 x 44.7 cm
oil on canvas board, 47.5 x 59.3 cm
Oil on masonite, 31.5 x 35.5 cm
oil on canvas board, 45.5 x 59.25 cm
