Hello!

My first life memory: excitedly sitting at the table with a big red crayon in my hand, then frustrated that my first fire engine drawing has ended up a scribble.

I have always been a creative soul. My career has always been in the creative field, first as a musician then as graphic designer/animator and art director in the broadcasting media industry. I have always maintained my connection with painting and drawing and now as a stay at home dad, I am stealing some time to seriously peruse painting.

My painting follows 2 strands. The first strand is exploring and extracting meaning from symbols - primarily the love heart. The heart shape has been central to my most personal works for the past 15 years. This ancient symbol is instantly recognisable and for me reflects feelings of positive self worth, passion, energy. The heart is always rendered with spontaneous energy and these playful works reflect my own nature.

The second strand is about examining our relationship with our natural environment and reconnecting to nature. This new direction for my painting involves large canvases revealing the minute beauty in the New Zealand flora landscape.

I call this new area of my work Gorilla Painting as the painting is a very fast and energetic act, almost akin to stealing the images from nature. I am developing tools to allow me to very quickly take painted “snapshots” in a large format. All work is painted directly from nature to ensure a true connection with my subject - no photos or computers. Needless to say, I love the out doors and never happier than when I’m in the NZ bush.
You can see some early examples of these works on my personal face book page.

The works I’m now exhibiting on Felt so far are some of my “Heart“ paintings.

I hope you enjoy these works.

Ralph (:Ralph (:
Christchurch
New Zealand