The Shotover Paintings are a series of works created during a residency on Aotearoa's South Island.

 

Travelling from Australia to work directly within a landscape that was both unfamiliar and immediately commanding, my intent was to develop a site-specific body of work while on residency at the Nock Art Foundation for presentation at the Aotearoa Art Fair. 

 

The thinking and preparation began months in advance, with expectations to deliver adding weight in the lead-up. To work in an incomparable landscape, I needed to free myself of preconceptions – to be open to an honest, immediate reaction to this new environment. 

​

For me, the project represents a privileged moment of cross-Tasman exchange – an Australian painter responding in situ to the physical and elemental conditions of Aotearoa.

​​​

Working plein air, I embedded myself within the terrain rather than observing it from a distance. Rivers, mountains, open fields and forests formed a shifting field of influence. The cool air, sun, wind, and rain were not incidental – they shaped both the process and the outcome.

​

These works aren’t polite translations of place, they’re forged in it – shaped by weather, grit, and exposure. Otago isn’t merely referenced here, it’s embedded – pressed into the surface, unapologetically local.

​

My process is centred on gestural painting within the landscape, whilst inviting the environment to collaborate. During the making of the Shotover Paintings, I invited natural debris from the immediate environment – earth, river sand, crushed mountain rock, grasses, and water from nearby rivers and streams – to be dispersed and embedded into the surface. My aim is for the evidence of time, weather, and terrain not to sit in the background – but to mark, interrupt, and co-create the image alongside responsive mark-making. 

 

The process is raw and reactive – action painting in the open, body focused on the moment, physically moving with the elements, not against them.

​

Working on Aotearoa soil for a local audience has cemented my ambition to continue creating paintings that are a collaboration with and a direct response to landscape. The Shotover Paintings continue my investigation into how painting can register place not as image alone, but as a lived encounter – an abstracted yet direct response to presence within the landscape.

​

With a special thank you to the Nock Art Foundation.

​​

I would like to acknowledge the Kāi Tahu people, the tangata whenua of the place where I had the privilege to work, and pay full respect to their relationship and ongoing cultural custodianship with the land, mountains and waterways of Tāhuna and the Otago region.