'Fields of Blue' is a small studio work that acts as a postcard from my time painting plain air in rural NSW. With no particular place in mind, it's a reaction to experience, subconsciously revealing an inner landscape that embraces a strong appreciation of materiality, light and space.

My approach to painting merges spontaneous automatism with deliberate gestural abstraction. Through a balance of conscious intention and unconscious instinctiveness, I aim to build a connection between process, materiality and surface, which is equally impulsive and intuitive.

My paintings are built on bursts of painterly gestures often triggered by the experience or memories of landscapes. Although looking to avoid representational content, landscapes become an inevitable reaction but remain firmly abstracted and seek to reach further than their place in my memory or experience.

Plein air painting has become a large part of my practice, recently working in and around a hayshed on Gundungurra Country, rural NSW. Painting within an open landscape feels innate, an intuitive reaction that fuels a deep and indescribable compulsion. It allows me to experiment with blurring the connection between myself as a human and my natural environment, to freely articulate feelings, thoughts, observations, and ideas through abstract expression.

Painting in a studio is working solely from inside myself. Outside, I'm also working inside the subject matter. Both environments will continue to fuel each other and my practice going forward.

*Please note artwork will not be shipped until after the 2024 Finalist Exhibition which ends in mid-October 2024.