Each one is unique, yet we still categorise them on sight.

When we lived on New Beach Road, Darling Point, we lived on the third story of a block of flats overlooking Sydney Harbour, the most beautiful harbour in the world. More specifically, it was just up from the Rushcutters Bay Marina. This is from where the Sydney - Hobart yacht race departs each year, and we would watch the spectacle from our balcony. If you walk around Rushcutters Bay Park and look toward the marina it is literally a forest of masts, sails and rope. The white sails against the blue sky and the harbour, clean enough to sustain an abundance of marine life. Nice.

Ironically this painting started its life as an ice painting. Glacial in fact. Paul Stapleton and I had been discussing doing a series of ice pieces, and that’s where I went with it - sharp peaks and crystalline facets. As if mimicking the thawing of the ice age, over the next half dozen years it slowly turned into a sandy, albeit mountainous, desert piece. Perhaps it was global warming as I can’t really recall working on it!