Don’t you just love a splash of red? I sure do. I’ve actually been very inspired by deep, passionate reds from an early age.
Red was my mother’s favourite colour. While my siblings and I were growing up, mum loved to decorate the interiors of the house – she has a real flair for it. She once decorated the living space with a Toulouse-Lautrec inspired wallpaper design that was a gorgeous red. We called it the Red Room and it was one of my favourite rooms in the house. Mum was always happy in that room. Even today, she still has splashes of red around her home – it’s definitely her happy colour.
So, when you see red in my paintings, you will know it’s because of my mum.
This particular painting came about when I entered an Art Prize in New York, which posed three questions to each artist: Who are we? Where have we been? Where are we going? We were asked to incorporate our answers to these questions into a painting.
My painting, Flying Frogs, described our environment and how it could potentially change.
Like in my other paintings, when you see frogs in nature – in your garden or in wetlands – it’s a sign of a healthy ecosystem. In this piece, the frogs are flying away, they can’t thrive when we don’t take care of our environment.
The little girl represents our community and future generations. Butterflies flutter around her, symbolising metamorphosis and change. She has the power to bring change and awareness to help mend our environment, by shifting the way we think about nature.
When she succeeds, the flying frogs will come home.
