2019–2023 — Pure Fluidity

By 2019, I had been contemplating a change in materials for some time. After moving from Darwin to Orange, then Sydney, Shepparton and eventually Melbourne in 2017, I had increasingly disconnected from the heavier materials I had worked with for so many years. I had a home studio in Shepparton for six months, but little was being produced that felt alive or inspiring to me. The physical weight and strong smell of polyurethane, varnish and other dense materials were no longer resonating with where my work was heading. Yet arriving in Melbourne had given me a feeling I had not experienced since leaving New Zealand in 2014. I remember travelling by train into Southern Cross Station, looking out at the architecture, the energy and the creativity of the city, and knowing that I was home. Creativity creates a sense of home in me, and Melbourne awakened something in me that had been missing. When I found a studio space at Laurent Gallery in St Kilda in 2019, it felt like an important new beginning, an opportunity to finally make the change I had been contemplating and begin exploring a lighter, more fluid way of working. I began experimenting with watercolour inks, gouache, acrylics, water and paper, exploring what happened when I allowed the materials more freedom.

This was a much deeper shift than simply changing materials. I had already spent many years exploring the physical landscape, and increasingly I had been exploring what lay beneath it, psychology, spirituality, the unseen and the ideas and beliefs held within the mind. Now, with this new freedom in the studio, I could allow those explorations to enter the work without needing to translate them into something recognisable. I was becoming less interested in making something that another person could immediately understand, and less concerned with what might appeal to a buyer. I wanted to follow what felt beautiful and meaningful to me, even when I couldn't explain why. Shape, movement, colour, darkness, light and the behaviour of the materials became a language of their own. The work could be something felt rather than understood, something emerging from within rather than representing something outside myself. Even when the work was dark, there was beauty in it because it was true. It was a genuine expression of something within me, my truth made visible.

I became increasingly fascinated by the way the materials could participate in the making. Water and ink moved, pooled, separated and created forms that I could influence but never completely control. Through Time and Space, created in 2021, came from this exploration. The particular watercolour ink I used created layers, depth and movement that I found deeply beautiful, almost as though something was revealing itself through the material. It was expressing the multidimensional nature of life and the many layers within the mind, something that could not be captured through a single surface or fixed form. When that particular ink was no longer made and became unavailable, I had no choice but to begin using other ink brands and continue exploring, while also learning to let go of a process I had loved. Eventually this led me to synthetic paper and alcohol inks. Dione, created in 2022, became an important expression of this new direction. The layers and depth seemed to hold something just beyond my understanding, contained within a definitive boundary, yet somehow belonging to the unseen. The work created a sense of the seen and unseen existing together, drawing me towards something more, something beyond what we can see, understand or perhaps ever fully comprehend. It felt as though the layers were holding a glimpse of a much greater reality just beyond our perception. The pouring medium I used with the alcohol ink was also no longer available, bringing this particular process to an end. Once again, I had to let go of something I loved and find another way forward.

During these years, Laurent Gallery became Artful Yoga Gallery, a gallery and wellness space, and I remained in the building, moving through three studio spaces as my practice grew. I became closely involved with the space, hanging exhibitions and being part of a diverse creative and wellbeing environment that brought together artists, yoga, healing, music, events and many different forms of creative and holistic practice. My exhibitions during this period included Fluxations in Time in 2020, Elemental in 2022 and A New World in 2023. Looking back, these years were a period of releasing, releasing the need to represent, to control, to explain and to know what the work meant before it had finished revealing itself. The landscape that had been such a constant language throughout my earlier practice was almost gone. What remained was movement, intuition, feeling, beauty and the unseen. By the end of 2023, my time at Artful Yoga had come to an end. Another studio was just around the corner, literally, beginning another stage in my artistic journey.