As a child I was dragged around the artless void of country Australia in the fifties. My parents were Salvation Army ministers, always hoping to do a little good in dusty hard drinking towns. Drawing helped me escape the dreariness. My art was a secret pursuit, 'art' was a girl thing, especially at school.

Film, dance and 'outside' music was 'sinful' in my family religion. TV was unavailable outside major cities. A visit to Melbourne for the ‘56 Olympics saw us crowding around shop windows just to stare at the blurry B+W screen (I remember wondering if seeing this new thing was also  'sinful'). At sixteen I secretly saw Cliff Richards in ‘Summer Holiday’. It was my first movie. There was a lot more to life than I had realized!

Eleven schools made me a crap student, always the new kid not knowing what was going on. I began work after finishing year 11 with the PMG (now Aust Post), I truly learned boredom. I resigned after eight months, went back to school and became an art teacher almost by default. My teaching career lasted one year. I was meant to fight in Vietnam, but the arrival of the Whitlam Govt. stopped all that. Reprieved, I decided with my partner Heather, to see the world. Two years later I was back in Australia working as a builder’s labourer.

We had travelled through Southeast Asia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran,Turkey, Crete, Tito's Yugoslavia, Italy and Israel on a shoe-string, then bicycled through Britain, 'West Germany' and Scandinavia. (see 'Travel Writings' below). Returning, we together hand-built a mudbrick house in Daylesford, Victoria. We had no power, water, sewerage or phone. A power connection a year later was a momentous milestone in our lives.

Building and teaching art became a means to support my family and to survive as an artist.

9/11  politicized my arts practice.

Having no arts network or support in rural Victoria (the internet in rural Australia was, and still is in many parts, non-existent) I decided to ‘collaborate’ with my audience during exhibition. I invited direct audience participation.  Contribution of verse, script (often not English), drawing, tagging and painting has been added by viewers to my images, and I have appropriated this artist/audience dialogue into my arts practice.

As a 'studio artist' for some time I have seen things change. Audiences are no longer passive. Boundaries assumed in the past are beginning to blur.

 

   TRAVEL WRITINGS

This transcript was typed in 2008 from the original handwritten diary from1974.   
Travel writings.pdf 
'GETTING OUT OF AUSTRALIA' -  forgive the first couple of  paragraphs, it was 1973
Travel2
'PORTUGUESE TIMOR'
Travel3
'INDONESIAN TIMOR'
Travel4
'MY FAVOURITE ISLAND AND JAVA'
Travel5
'SINGAPORE AND MALAYA'
Travel6
'THAILAND AND KNIVES'
Travel7
'INDIA AND NEPAL'
Travel 8
'PAKISTAN - A 24HR NIGHTMARE'
Travel9
'AFGHANISTAN'
Travel10
'IRAN'
Travel11
'TURKEY - THE FUN CONTINUES'
Travel 12
'GREECE - OUR FAVOURITE COUNTRY'
The about trip took  6mths, after this we:

'GETTING OUT OF AUSTRALIA' -  forgive the first couple of  paragraphs, it was 1973 'PORTUGUESE TIMOR''INDONESIAN TIMOR''MY FAVOURITE ISLAND AND JAVA''SINGAPORE AND MALAYA''THAILAND AND KNIVES''INDIA AND NEPAL''PAKISTAN - A 24HR NIGHTMARE''AFGHANISTAN''IRAN''TURKEY - THE FUN CONTINUES''GREECE - OUR FAVOURITE COUNTRY'The about trip took  6mths, after this we:

 

'GETTING OUT OF AUSTRALIA' -  forgive the first couple of  paragraphs, it was 1973 'PORTUGUESE TIMOR''INDONESIAN TIMOR''MY FAVOURITE ISLAND AND JAVA''SINGAPORE AND MALAYA''THAILAND AND KNIVES''INDIA AND NEPAL''PAKISTAN - A 24HR NIGHTMARE''AFGHANISTAN''IRAN''TURKEY - THE FUN CONTINUES''GREECE - OUR FAVOURITE COUNTRY'The about trip took  6mths, after this we:
Feature Image