A Year of Still Life

I have been working on still life for a year now. The work has evolved considerably and continues to hold my interest. While I’ve continued to work in series, I’ve found that with still life, I have to make one painting at a time. The technical challenges of the genre make creating several at once tricky.

My first series of still life was created for a solo show at The Churn Room in March 2025. The series, titled A Sense of Self, explored ideas around identity, memory, and the meaning objects hold. The paintings were quite large , A0 and A1.

At the time, our home was on the market, and I knew we would never live in a Queenslander again. I used architectural elements from my home as compositional devices inspired by Bonnard and Matisse and to celebrate our home. We had moved the house onto a nine-acre block 15 years before, and my husband designed an extension so it would be perfectly positioned and as environmentally passive as possible. We rarely used air conditioning; natural breezes flowed through the French doors and windows. As I packed our possessions, I remembered the people who had owned or gifted them, where I had bought certain items, and the seasons of life I had been in when they came into my life.

My work then pivoted to Ah Ha Moments, a group show at The Hub in Caboolture. I attend a monthly art group called Art Lab, which I often describe as a book group for art, though it’s so much more. It provides a safe, supportive space to interrogate our practice at a deeper level. Members come from different backgrounds, nationalities, and disciplines.

The series of sixteen A4 paintings, “Pictures of You, Pieces of Me”, was a physical expression of my Art Lab experience. My own “Ah Ha” came gradually: resolving a long-standing struggle to write meaningfully about my work and appreciate its worth. Each panel incorporates text, a title, and a number along the deep sides, making language an integral part of the artwork; it is embedded, rather than separate. Each panel features one object and one flower. Panel sixteen is entirely text-based, capturing my experience of art alongside the lyrics of Pictures of You by The Cure.

Once Pictures of You was complete, I turned my attention to our impending move. Our house had been sold in May, and we began packing in earnest. I worked on a series of 21 paintings called Goodbye Lot 20, acknowledging that I would be leaving my Cedar Creek studio, where I had worked for thirteen years. I had been extremely fortunate to create in such a stunning venue. Between May and June, the studio light is always beautiful — softer, with shadows inkier and richer. I chose vessels with personal meaning and flora from my gardens and paddocks. It was my farewell to a place we were ready to leave, approached with gratitude. I knew I would miss the plants I had nurtured in challenging terrain, but it was time to move on.

It took a while to start painting again once we moved. The chaos of a move after fourteen years, and the task of making a new house a home, delayed me. The upside? A creative life and being married to an architect mean there’s always inspiration around us, and we are always full of “great” ideas

I painted a still life for Pretty in Pink at Studio One Noosa, a breast cancer fundraiser. It was a challenge, the canvas was expensive, and the cause is personal to me. Our new garden was a blank slate, with just one tree, so I scoured the neighbourhood for flowers I could rehome. I found an elderbush that reminded me of my aunt in Cumbria and a roadside bottlebrush, and I was really pleased with the result.

I was to be a featured artist for Feast at Stevens Street Gallery, but the flu knocked me out for four weeks. I’m not a patient person; I don’t rest and get grouchy when I can’t do things. Once I recovered, time was short, but a deadline has always been my best motivator. I worked on manageable 40x40 cm panels, each overpainted at least four times previously. They have been recycled many times. Beneath the surface of each, you’d find three or four earlier images.

I painted fruit from our new local fruit shop, all from an aerial perspective — a viewpoint I’ve loved since university for its graphic sensibility. I also revisited some 40x40 pieces I had made ten years ago for the Samford and Surrounds Arts Trail, editing and repainting many of them. This new series followed a pattern I hadn’t explored in years: often, I came up with the title first and then created the piece. French Onion gained blue-and-white stripes and a peek of the French flag, while Rogue Granny features a Granny Smith apple in a bowl of lemons. The collection looks fabulous and remains at Stevens Street Gallery until the end of the year.

For my final collection of 2025, I created a series of 20x20 cm pieces. I had leftover boards from a workshop series and needed work for Foot Square at Aspire. I kept it simple: one fruit on a white ground. I set up four fruits on a white plinth and painted them from above. The weather made the exercise challenging — windy days sent the fruit flying, and I lost a few strawberries along the way!