Art and Abart

Wellington watercolour Painting at Wellington Airport while waiting for my flight.

Sitting in the cafe in Taihape looking at my coffee, I can't help thinking that the townsfolk and the coffee are similar .... a bit brow...

My mother has a green thumb and is an avid gardener. The garden is her preferred mode of creative expression. When she was 84 she moved into...

New Zealand, North Island Central District Highlands The central plateau of New Zealand's North Island where I grew up is a spect...

Another of the cafes in Taihape that make excellent coffee is the Brown Sugar Cafe. Behind the cafe is a pretty garden. I painted the bluebe...

Taihape has several cafes and they all make excellent coffee. One of them is the Soul Food Cafe in the middle of the main street. Their coff...

New Zealand has been gripped by a drought, the worst in 70 years they say. There is no feed at all in the paddocks between Napier and Taihap...

I was in Napier last week for Verdi's Requiem. "Lovely building this", I said to the bank teller. "Yes, we get a lot of...

Today Black Caviar (the horse) was racing at Randwick for perhaps the last time in its career. There has been so much hype about it that whe...

Faces are endlessly fascinating. These ones were made by dropping colour onto a canvas page and folding it in two.

The mountains Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe and Tongariro are just north of Taihape where I grew up. Below is a watercolour of Mt Ruapehu, painted from...

My big oak table is very stable so it's an excellent work bench ... mainly used for framing pictures. I had to remove all the picture f...

If you are selling furniture in a giant featureless warehouse, why not decorate it with fantastical fabrics to give it character? This is th...

My 50 year old kitchen is overdue for a revamp. There is nothing much worth saving - benchtops (45cm!) are falling apart, cupboards don'...

Christopher Richardson, originally from Tasmania, sung at the Messiah at St Andrews last Friday. He has a wonderful powerful bass-baritone v...

Someone asked me why there are no photos of me on my blog/facebook/website. Well, here is one, a vignette taken last winter when I got my ...

I used to work almost opposite St Andrews Cathedral in Sydney but until last night I had never been inside the building. The Cathedral is ri...

I liked the T-shirt worn by Tom the pianist at last week's rehearsals. Perhaps being with people like Tom for 10 days made me doubly dis...

I always seem to be too busy to go to the beach, but tonight was so balmy I took the opportunity to take a beach walk. There was a huge moon...

I spent last week drawing at rehearsals in the old Marrickville Town Hall which has the most amazing plaster ceiling.  If you look at the ce...