MARCH 2024
Artist Statement:
“One of the main reasons I enjoy travelling is that whenever you step beyond your familiar surroundings you see things from a new perspective.
In short you see things more intensely.
This has a lot to do with observing something for the first time.
For a visual artist, it’s the moment of truth. My creative imagination starts to run in overdrive when I am faced with new challenges, and how to make sense of it. Depending on where I am, for example, a Bridge in Paris, a square in Sicily, a suburban garden in Sydney, or the Daintree National Park in Queensland.
I ask questions like; What shape is that lamp post? What kind of pattern exists on that roadside kerb? How many arches exist to support that Bridge in Paris? How does that leaf differ in shape from the previous one? How does the contours on that balustrade manage to repeat itself in harmony? Why does the colour of the shadow from the veranda seem so intense? How can I make sense of those patterns forming in the water with my pencil?
All these burning questions can be answered by looking and then, not trusting your first judgment, looking again. The answers of course are many fold and as unpredictable as the questions. However, the best form of answer might well be to draw, paint and, photograph, again and again, until you feel you have some kind of understanding or interpretation, that leads you on to the next question. That in essence is the act of creativity. Forward moves, backward and sideways moves, and then of course realising that what you did in the first instance, was the one that you should have trusted.
These considerations may seem small, even trivial, but they are the very fabric of visual exploration.
Sometimes it is a combination of, not just what you see, but how you feel about it.
All of these works on exhibition are a culmination of long and deep responses to significant places and environments that I have chosen to visit. For me, they are an antidote to the pessimism that abounds and a personal celebration of all that is positive in the human spirit.”
Pictured above: Petit Palais Garden Paris, 102 x 76 cm, Oil, Oil Pastel on linen, Bernard Ollis, Photograph - John Fotiadis