i had discovered the monoprint. being a belligerent student, i always needed to invent everything for myself .... still the same today. but i was really excited about this squakky ink rolled out flat on a smooth surface, and putting the paper carefully onto this acreage of glue-ish stuff with glee and naievity. hundreds of them maDE BEFORE BREAKFAST most mornings on the farm in mittagong... this is one of them. when exhibited at blaxland gallery in huge show in 1993, ... it was sold. 2 weeks later it was returned.. 'couldn't live with it'.

This little painting began one friday night after I got home from teaching down in Sydney. I had small score on the big world, yet I had a grasp on some things.... such as a minor fascination with an ancient King dancing exuberantly and naked in front of his people down the main street for some sort of important celebration.

I grew up with Dave, my younger brother. We shared a rich bush upbringing on the then outskirts of Sydney, in East Roseville....the bush was our education, a deeper one than the schooling, I daresay.

Many years later and married for only a year, I decided intrepidly to quit my part time teaching job as a teacher so that i could put more time into painting, naively reckoning that there was an avenue for some upstart-nobody like me in the art world.

To make a buck I looked at doing portraits and needed subjects. I was flying blind.

My poor wife...

Dave volunteered to visit and give time into my dream. Together one misty morning we ventured deep down into the blue mountain crevises where I made a painting of rocks and wet trees with a non image of some thing supposed to be human.

Time was up... Dave had to head off.

The painting you see here was made early the following morning before breakfast. Dave in his pyjamas. I saw him sloping in the chair and said 'stay there, dave'. I dragged easal and paints etc from studio. I made this mass of marks that somehow corresponded, to Dave in 45 minutes, before the train was due.

this work found its way onto paper in a studio in brussels, 1997. upstairs, on my own , mid morning in a strange city, i toiled to pick up an oilstick and snailed this image out. people over in brussels saw my drawings in ways that i have not often met here in oz.... they actually valued the drawings, with a deep respect for the evident freedom of them ...a few even wept.

This work wa smade many years ago when I was burnt out with a teaching position ... and needed to spend more time painting. I was young> anyway, i saw one way ahead was to do portraits ... my then wife, Gina, had a cousin who came all the way to wentworth falls from sydney for five days for this purpose. I could barely believe that when the time came to begin our work, he dressed in his school uniform. Anyway, cutting the story short, Johnny, {now Richard}, sat well... and i made my first 'real portrait'. never again did i go into this space.

do you know that distance of observation that sometimes changes the way you see the people closest to you?

it is scarey.

This is the earliest of the works on this website. During travels to and from art school on the 207 bus in the early 70's, fellow commuters reluctantly got used to me pulling out pad and pencil, then scribbling and scratching out my little studies of them as the bus limped through the traffic.

I made this canvas then prepared it with a yellow glaze the evening before it was painted the following morning.

I remember that the image itself took half an hour to complete. It was exhibited two years later at the first "Sydney Festival", and sold to the festival's director.

This is a work made in the early 90's. It is a small treasure, travelling with me through the Belgian visit in 97, and much appreciated by people there. It has accompanied me through many years, and presently lives in my Broken Hill studio. It is the pearl from a series of works at the time exploring oils and plaster on hessian.

This is a drawing that i made the morning after my daughter was born, ...

You can probably see an exuberant dance..... it is simply that.....

it was made on thin paper with a small stub of charcoal.

growing older now, i value the verve of the marks that make this work.... it is a deep man dance, feet planted and the body attempting to behave as a compass to his offspring, .... north, south, east, west.