Biography/CV

My French mother before me was a very creative and experimental artist. Finally, by meandering through different creative pursuits in life, I ended up as an artist too. After studying architecture, which gave me a grounding in aesthetics, form and the use of a pencil, I spent many years as a pianist and actor in both theatre and TV. While studying theatre in Paris, over the summer holidays and inspired by Van Gogh’s use of colour, I headed to the French Riviera and sold my first ever series of small paintings as I travelled from town to town. It was a new chapter in my creativity.

Ten or so years later, an art hiatus ensued as I went back to university, gaining a BA(Hons 1) in philosophy. However, following a year’s sponsored residency in E. Indonesia, I then completed a Master of Art at COFA, UNSW, based on my island experiences. From it also came a year-long exhibition at the Australian National Maritime Museum.  Since then I have exhibited internationally and locally with works in collections in Australia, Malaysia, UK, France and USA.

My art practice is rather varied – from small pen & ink illustrations and watercolours to medium-sized and large canvasses in acrylic or oil. I have done illustrations for books, travel sketches, watercolours of a Provençal village, sketches of timber whaling boats from East Indonesia, and a long series of Rothkoesque oils playing on the ambiguity between abstraction and realism based on patterns found in Nature, reminding us that the world, even in its smallest details, is extraordinary.

However, with the advent of Covid and being basically grounded at home, I spent a year doing studies for a figurative series of works drawing on the idea of the more evolved human – a superman or woman – where icons of Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity play around with DC comics’ heroes in a surreal and sometimes humorous manner. This was my 20-20 vision! Over the next 4 years I painted these images through which I have sought to bring attention to the compassion and sanity required for human development and evolution. Nietzsche, for example, saw his Superman as a being of will, a pure act, not the glorified policeman of the DC/Marvel world. Similarly I am suggesting, through my art, that humanity needs to concentrate more on compassion by improving the emotional and spiritual wellbeing of all.