I have been drawing and painting on and off for most of my life. These days my preferred medium is watercolour, painting landscapes, seascapes cityscapes and wildlife in an impressionistic style.

For many years, my art took a backseat to other priorities, but the desire was always there, and I inevitably returned to my painting whenever time allowed.

In the beginning, I learned a great deal about drawing and painting through trial and error, trying my hand at a variety of media over the years. I initially settled on pastel and charcoal, loving the versatility that they allowed.

I have always had a keen interest in wildlife, and have found this to be a great source of inspiration. I have painted a large number of wildlife pieces in pastel over the years – many of them of native birds. My focus was (and continues to be) on capturing the individual personalities of each subject, using all my own photographs and on-site sketches as my starting point in many instances.

In my case, however, pastel sometimes encouraged a tendency towards perfectionism, and I found that, with some pieces, my work was becoming too tight.

I was agonising over every hair and eyelash, working towards accuracy often at the expense of artistic expression. While I admire artists who can achieve photo-realism, I also understand we all want different things from our art and, for me, I needed to loosen up.

And so, I took up watercolour – and discovered a whole new level of challenge.

After some futile attempts to teach myself the medium through books, I decided it was time to get serious, and studied with Greg Allen, one of Australia’s leading watercolourists.

A whole new world opened up to me, and I spent a lot of time painting landscapes and seascapes, learning more about the medium in particular, and composition in general.

These new skills added to the knowledge I’d gained from workshops with other leading artists, and gave me the freedom to further explore my artistic expression.

So, while my earlier work was quite detailed, my more recent offerings have become slightly more impressionistic, although they still lean strongly towards realism. I like to get the viewer involved in the piece by using their understanding of the subject to complete the detail in their own mind.

My love for wildlife means a large portion of my work is centred on birds and animals, but in the past few years – particularly since working with watercolour – my inspiration has broadened to include landscapes, seascapes, and coastal and urban scenes.

My work has featured regularly around Melbourne in a number of Rotary art shows, including the prestigious Camberwell Rotary Art Show, as well as the Wildlife Art Society of Australasia annual exhibition, and I have participated in successful solo and joint exhibitions. I am a member of Wildlife Art Society of Australasia and Australian Guild of Realist Artists, and have been awarded the Allan McEvey Memorial Award for wildlife art.

I have consistently sold pieces at exhibition, and hope to continue to build my presence in private collections over the years to come.