The bush and sydney's estuaries are my major memories of childhood.... school too, but much less so, though vivid.

I enjoyed a treasure-house of bush environment and much freedom in my childhood.

Please visit 'Introduction to the Work' for info from the other side.

Anyhow, this painting was a simple joy to make. ... a rock pool , into which many of my childhood memories were sunk beside the sea... lying on warm rock and peering into the tiny wet otherness of marine life.... imagining myself in there somehow.

I was just 26 when I made this work in 1979, finishing it early in 1980. My wife and I lived in the Blue Mountains in a delightful little cottage, before we had children. It was based on a coffee table in our living room with a generous set of windows alongside it. But more importantly, it was based on childhood experiences of wonderment surrounded by bush,.. and stories from Oriental and European fairy-tales... early cultural delights.

I made the painting with the intention of exerting myself fully into a single work. Large task.

I was young and naive... but this painting found an audience, even being given a prize for 'still life' by Reinis Zusters, a wonderful and underestimated artist.

Any artist needs a good sense of humour and and a teaspoonful of courage every day... and character, in order to resist the littleness of instant applause, at the expense of what took you into the project in the first place.