‘No Smoking’ was a group of energetic, freehand abstracts, using acrylic, collage, oil stick, graphite and ink on canvas.

I know it’s not very conceptual or post-modern but my paintings are always a reflection of what’s happening in my life – emotionally, practically and physically. And the last twelve months have been a little turbulent, hence the roughness and raw edges in these new paintings.

’No smoking’ was an instruction to myself. It refers to an interview with author, Grahame Greene, whose work seemed relevant to the last year of my life. He said that his great struggle was to avoid allowing his more confused characters to ‘smoke their stories dry like a fish’.

And so I took this on, and chose to do the same. To stop ‘smoking the pictures dry’, I set myself certain working rules.

To add history to the paintings, all of the collaged elements had to have had a previous life – so I picked up fabrics and text from op shops and garage sales. The colour palette is much brighter than my usual work, because I ‘quoted’ colour combinations – some from a vivid body of Aboriginal paintings which I came across in Melbourne earlier this year and some from street art in Melbourne laneways. I worked the paint quickly and freely to keep the paintings open and energetic. And I chose to add an emotional layer to the work by incorporating text from a number of letters and messages I’d saved from the people closest to me. 

The end result was 25 paintings which surprised me by being so vivid and vibrant. Each hides and exposes its own story, offering glimpses of memory and experience in layers of texture, collage and paint.