About me

I am a rural Australian artist, based in the Southern Downs region of Queensland. My work sits at the intersection of art and craft, exploring pattern and colour relationships to create luminous, abstracted, imaginary landscapes. 

A love of mid-century children’s book illustrations, the Sydney Moderns and the 1970’s pattern and decoration movement have informed my work. In recent years my artwork has been heavily influenced by map imagery, literature and poetry. 

Living on a farm for many years has resulted in a close and often fraught relationship with weather systems, and the skies in my pieces tell emotional and personal stories of my connection to my environment. 

My current work explores treescapes and root systems, using oil pastel and mixed media to create richly coloured, velvety and prismatic images. Another recent series of light-filled geometric illustrations in gouache interpret my obsession with the weather in patterns found in traditional crafts such as crochet and quilting. 

These carefully designed pieces require a systematic approach, but paradoxically I use materials and techniques that intentionally restrict my ability to repaint and overpaint, resulting in harmonic colour schemes balancing consonance and dissonance. 

In my craft practice, I design crochet patterns and since 2014 have coordinated the Yarntopians yarn bombing team (formerly the Warwick Art Gallery Yarntopians), designing and facilitating a collaborative installation for the Jumpers and Jazz in July festival. This team brings together the work of up to 100 crafters of all ages and skill levels to create impressive and energetic large-scale yarn art installations that attract thousands of visitors each year.

I have been showing my work publicly since 2009, and have works held in private collections in Australia, the US, Canada and the UK. My artwork and tutorials are used in school classrooms worldwide to teach colour theory.