New works made during the floods

My home town of Brisbane endured it’s second major flood in as many years. My family are all safe and dry, but for many, the news wasn’t so great.

With no power and a view of the back creek and it’s bursting banks, rising high up the trees, I needed something to keep my mind off the intense weather conditions outside. So, I painted!

I felt inspired to work large after recently seeing a gorgeous short video of the lovely Flora Bowley creating a painting from blank canvas to finished piece. You can find it here. Do check it out, it’s super dooper inspiring!

It was so great to work big again, I used to paint murals for a living and in recent years I’ve worked on small scale, as they are easier to scan and make prints for my customers. But this time, in order to work large, I decided to rework an artwork I created 5 years ago with our wedding vows on it.

I used mostly brushes and sponges to block in large areas and shapes and I really enjoyed the process and the challenge of making the overall composition work on a larger scale than I’m used to lately.

By the time kidlet woke up from his nap, I’d gotten quite a big chunk of the painting done. If you’d like to see progress shots, pop over to my Instagram feed to check out a bunch more pics of the artwork unfolding. I’ll upload final pics on here once it’s all completed.

That night, the painting urge was still there, so I found another painting I wanted to rework. It was one from my 2010 ‘Peacocks and Pinstripes’ exhibition, called Polly Wolly Doodle.

Here’s the ‘Before’ shot :~

And ‘After’ :~

I’ve called it ‘Storm Clouds’, which is quite aptly named, I think, considering the wild, wooly weather outside! Both of these artworks will go into my shop in the coming weeks.