I originally trained as an aquatic biologist and worked in this field for many years. This training in science has given me an analytical approach to my painting and honed my observational skills. I have worked on several wildlife documentaries, including with Sir David Attenborough. A few years ago I felt driven to focus my creative urges in the visual arts having not picked up a brush since high school and I enrolled in a Bachelors of Fine Arts at the University of Tasmania. I will graduate this year with a major in painting.

My past research in wildlife biology has given me an appreciation of the beauty of nature and an awareness of the darkness that parallels it – nature is not kind, nor gentle. It is savage and brutal, red in tooth and claw. Coming from a family that has had its own fair share of random tragedy, I feel compelled to paint images of children who quietly but assuredly defy the threats that this world challenges them with.