I’ve created over 20 self portraits, the first was at age 16, graphite pencil on paper in front of a mirror in the bathroom. I’m the subject that’s easily available and I like being part of the tradition of painters making self-portraits. My self portraits are an ongoing process, I’ll continue doing them throughout my life. It’s like, without having to put into words or talk to someone, I can paint what I feel. Sometimes they were healing to paint. I have always been a painter of truth, it’s how I genuinely was at the time, there’s no front. They might just be a moment in time, a mood of the day. I look at the painting and let it be, I don’t ponder over it. It’s satisfying to look back at them.

 
When I was a child I knew that I’d be an artist — the more I got into painting, the more it pulled me in. It’s like an obsession. So in a way, although the businessman in ‘Passerby Collins Street’ is world’s apart from me, I understand what it means to have intense focus and passion for something…and how this needs to be balanced with other things in life.

‘Passerby Collins Street’ translates what I felt from a few moments observing a middle-aged man in Melbourne. His strong piercing eyes caught my attention. The colours are the feeling and from my memory of this man I felt shades of blue, browns and orange. He was a confident guy on the go, rushing to get back to work, but something about him told me he wasn’t just all about work and ‘getting ahead’. Using acrylic on canvas, I painted the planes of his tired face, with the intention of adding in some softness. The warmer colours on the left side of his face represent him seeking or perhaps already finding sources of happiness. The light in the painting illuminates aspects of the man beyond his job title.

Being able to portray a human face is ever-intriguing to me, it’s a subject that you can’t stop learning to portray in different ways.

Preview more works from my upcoming exhibition, Passerby.

 
While most of the paintings in Passerby are portraits, I’ve also included some figure works. See images below.

The first work ‘There She Stood’ came to me easily. I had a clear impression of the person I was painting. A work like this is all about feeling, it’s not about recording surface appearance or detail at all. I’ve translated what I felt from a five second glimpse of a young woman standing at traffic lights during her lunch break. She was a directed person with confidence. The turn of her head in the painting is when something distracted her and she turned to look in the distance, a busy point in time was briefly stopped. With some of these paintings it’s almost like that momentary feeling subconsciously sinks in and later I pull it out and paint from that feeling on autopilot. I’m not planning the colour before I put it down, I’m just pulling colours from the palette from that stored feeling of someone. For this painting I used colours I felt from her, a down to earth girl, who was not at all superficial.

After painting ‘There She Stood’ I then kept an eye out for other people I felt something from who I could paint in a similar style. This became a series of four works, each painted mostly using brush and palette knife, oil on board.

A different mood entirely, ‘Passersby CBD’ shows daily commuters in a mechanised society riding the escalator. Some stand with silent minds, others immersed in their screens before entering the office and facing a larger screen all day. Then returning down the escalator at the end of the day, they are immersed in their screens again before riding the train sandwiched between multiple commuters craving to return to a place called home. The painting tries to capture the feel of passersby collectively, and it’s also influenced by how that work-style feels to me. I used oil on aluminium, like I did for ‘Passersby Federation Square’, an early-morning urban scene depicting the quiet movement of commuters as they begin their day in the city.

‘Figure in Red’ began as a fairly detailed and proportional figure, then I used forceful strokes to cloak the figure in red. I felt energised when painting it and that energy comes through in the power of the colour and the movement of the figure.

Just five weeks until the show: Passerby, 7-21 March, Metropolis Gallery, hope to see you there!

There She Stood

Waiting

Girl at the Station

There She Sat

Passersby CBD

Passersby Federation Square

Figure in Red

 
Preview more works from my upcoming solo show, Passerby.