As he explains: “This series of paintings began at a time when longer working hours kept me out of the studio during the day. My sister, Freda, would visit the studio on my painting nights and I began a picture of her that is not in this show (a particular image, Portrait of a Lady, that I had just seen at Queensland Art Gallery by the British artist Gilbert Soest was playing around the edges of my mind).
I would paint ‘wet into wet’ for a few nights and the following week I would sand off the surface and start again. We never finished that work but I eventually decided on a series of paintings that would each be completed in 5-6 hours. The luxury of uninterrupted time was fantastic and the element of narrative developed naturally in the work.
Half-way through this project Freda left Brisbane for a trip to the USA which she had planned for many months. The purpose of the trip was a two week long horse ride through Arizona ending at the Grand Canyon. I continued our routine through Instagram and painted a number of pictures based on her ‘posts’, one of which is included in this show.
When she returned we kept painting and finished three more images. After that it seemed that the series had completed itself.”
