To be quite honest, the conceptual stage of my art is often more elimination than inspiration. The initial idea usually appears when my mind is sort of idling, like when I?m traveling or taking a shower. Like many of us. From there it?s is primarily a matter of bringing the idea back to the essential. This means I?m usually throwing away 90%.
In general my work is much closer to reality than meets the eye. Most of my ideas come from ordinary things around me; landscapes, seeds, flowers, buildings and I take lots of reference photos. The images below illustrate the relationship between the initial concept and the finished painting. The first image shows a Pinus Radiata plantation close to were I lived in New Zealand.
You can see the influences in the paintings ‘Populus Flucta’ and ‘Sequoiadendron Nemus’.
The next image shows some berries of a Flax Lily I found while walking the dog. Most of the fruit fell off when I walked home, but enough was left for a sketchy picture.
The second image illustrates the optical characteristics of solid crystal. And then the 2 paintings that came out of this inspiration.
