I’m an Australian artist born in Melbourne, moved to Sydney and now calling the South Coast of NSW my home, after having the unique opportunity of living quite extensively overseas the last 10 years in Hong Kong, Singapore and London.

I love what I do and have enjoyed the colourful journey it has taken me on. Growing up in Melbourne, Australia, I went to art school, firstly RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) where I did a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts, then on to Victorian College of the Arts to complete a Post Graduate Diploma in Fine Art. Later, another change saw me move to Sydney, where I studied at the University of Western Sydney and completed a Masters in Design.

But the years of living off banana smoothies and toast had me succumb to eventually working as a motion graphics designer, which for the most part I totally loved, but I certainly don’t miss the late-night renders! This bought vast experience across a broad range of broadcast and video post-production in film, television and corporate video.

After a successful career, I found myself being drawn back to art and the urge to paint was too much to ignore. I decided to shift my focus back on my own artistic works, which was supported by taking on a studio at Lennox Street Studios, in the inner-city Sydney suburb of Newtown. A later radical move to Hong Kong saw me setup a studio in the chaotic downtown of Sai Ying Pun where my artistic journey really started to take shape.

My fine art background mixed with my graphics experience have combined my techniques to adopt a very illustrative style. All my paintings are initially conceived on the computer, using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. I mainly do my drawings in Illustrator and arrange my composition in Photoshop. I then print the outline onto canvas or paper and the rest is hand-painted, using acrylic paints. Once painted, I redraw over various elements using art pens and occasionally incorporate collage elements, namely buttons, paper and doilies, to help lift the story off the canvas. Quite a convoluted process, but I love the clean lines and graphic quality of the end result. The only major headache with this approach (and its focus on clean lines and white canvas!) is that ANY spilt paint can mean starting ALL OVER AGAIN! And this has happened on more than one occasion…

You may wonder how I stand out in a sea of Alice Interpretations? I don’t think it’s necessarily a case of trying to stand out, but rather to add to the rich collective of Alice interpretations. For me, reinterpreting the book in my own visual language allows me freedom to explore and even embellish the story.

But if I was to pinpoint what I think I have done differently, it would be the graphic style I have adapted through the imagery. The monochromatic palette I have used throughout this series of work strips away the rich tapestry of colour you would normally expect from an Alice book and takes each back to a single image or theme to compliment the story. The simplicity of this approach focuses on the story telling of the narrative, not a literal reflection of the characters.