What would happen if… I painted moonlight on the sea?
The question arrived just as I was heading to bed.
The moon was actually a harvest moon that night, so I wandered out onto the balcony. From our home I can see across the hinterland, over Surfers Paradise and Burleigh, with distant glimpses of the ocean beyond. The moonlight stretched across the water, clouds drifted slowly through the sky, and my imagination simply refused to switch off.
I remember thinking it was all becoming a little too romantic. Then I laughed to myself and thought, bugger it. Some ideas are simply too beautiful not to paint.
By morning the first canvas was already waiting on the easel.
Saltwater Serenades is a collection of contemporary seascape and cloudscape paintings inspired by those moonlit moments. Working with atmosphere, changing weather, reflective water and expansive skies, these paintings allow the horizon to become a place of stillness, where sea and sky quietly mirror one another through colour, light and mood.
The collection grew from one irresistible idea, but like so many of my paintings, it became something much larger than I first imagined.
And, as always, I found myself standing in front of another blank canvas, smiling and wondering…
What would happen if…?
From sea horizons to inland distance, Quiet Journeys explores solitude, weather and the stillness held within landscape.
