Like most members I loved art at school. I continued with it by taking art as an optional extra subject while at Sydney Teachers' College. My lecturer there was Rah Fizelle and he had a profound influence on me in many ways.
I didn't begin painting seriously however, until I joined the Glenroy Art Group in 1972. By then my teaching career had been exchanged for one as a pilot. Aircraft had also been a childhood obsession. I paint almost exclusively in oils. Much of my work is fairly realistic (if you teach art that's what most people expect). Recently I have had two successful solo exhibitions of aviation paintings, which of course need to be quite accurate, since the audience is likely to be very knowledgeable and critical of any missing rivets.
I like landscape but my real passion is people. I recently spent two years painting 92 portraits of my classmates at high school, as a basis for a reunion of people, many of whom had not seen each other for 50 years. I also love to do imaginative and semi-abstract things and I probably consider that work more significant than my impressionist paintings. That is because I believe that real art should involve invention and include something of the artist's personality, rather than be a mere reproduction of what is seen. I took up sculpture about ten years ago and now work mostly in bronze. I love it and my biggest regret in art is that I didn't discover it sooner.
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