Travels with my brush

Travels with my brush – Avoca Beach Inlet

The Australian coastline doesn't sit still long enough for a literal painting — the light changes, the water changes color, and the clouds never agree on where they are. So this series of abstract landscapes abandons describing the details of the bush and coast and instead attempts to capture the feeling of standing in front of it.

I stripped away tree and rock formation details, and replaced them with bold color, rough shapes to resemble nature's elements. Texture was liberally applied with a pallette knife, helping to express movement and emotion.

The loose brushstrokes and thin knife cuts help convey a fast moving cloudy sky, and a wind-torn rugged bushland.

Lines, shapes, and colors evolve on the board without being tied to realistic representation. The focus is on the materials – working with thick textures, scraping back layers of paint and using splashes of thick color helped focus purely on the work's composition.

The sausage: Oil and acrylic on board, spray paint, clay, spackle and fluid use of a trusty palette knife.