Art in the Hospital: Supporting the Gold Coast Hospital Foundation
Sometimes paintings find their way into the world for reasons beyond the studio. Recently, a number of my works became part of an initiative supporting the Gold Coast Hospital Foundation — extending beyond the wall and into a place of care, reflection, and community.
The Gold Coast community was given the opportunity to acquire original works, with proceeds supporting the Gold Coast Hospital Foundation and, in turn, local patients and their families.
This initiative grew from the Bloom Gallery within the Gold Coast University Hospital, where I exhibit alongside a number of my students. The gallery continues to bring art into what can otherwise be a clinical and sterile environment, softening the space and offering moments of colour and reflection. Works are still available there, with a percentage of sales contributing back to the hospital.
For this collection, the works were a departure from my usual quieter, more restrained landscapes. These pieces were intentionally brighter, more immediate — small, cheerful studies shaped to lift the atmosphere and meet the space they were created for. Colour was allowed forward, the mood lightened, the intention simple: to bring a sense of ease.
I donated a number of paintings to the hospital, and from this, the Foundation organised a silent auction. Collectors bid on the works for themselves, while the proceeds were directed back into supporting patients and their families.
The auction has now concluded, raising $2400 for the Foundation — a modest but meaningful outcome.
One of the quieter pieces was retained by the hospital for the Book Nook — a small space set aside for patients and visitors to sit, breathe, regroup, and read. That felt like the natural resting place for the work.
Even in these more vibrant pieces, my work begins in the same way — through observation, through response to landscape, through attention to light and atmosphere. Here, that language shifts slightly. Less about distance, more about immediacy. Less about quiet endurance, more about gentle uplift.
Hospitals carry a particular kind of atmosphere — one where time stretches and contracts at once. The idea that a painting might sit within that environment, offering even a brief shift in feeling, is a simple but important one.
Each work remains a one-of-a-kind original. I’ve never produced prints or reproductions, and that sense of singular presence feels especially relevant in a setting like this — where each painting becomes part of someone’s moment, however fleeting.
I’m grateful to the Gold Coast Hospital Foundation, and to the presence of the Bloom Gallery within the hospital, for creating something that connects art so directly with care.
As these works move into their new homes, and as others continue to live within the hospital, I hope they offer what they were made for — a small sense of calm, of balance, and of quiet relief.
