1999 – 2001
In the mid-1990s, I moved into a disused 70-year-old Presbyterian church in Sydney’s CBD—Scotts Church—with gargoyles and tall windows overlooking Wynyard Park. During this stage and the warehouse years, I was living and working in my studio.
It was a dramatic, inspiring place to work. At first, I rented a space in the steeple and continued working on my Under the Trees series.
By the late 1990s, the building was sold and developers wanted us out. After we ignored multiple eviction notices, a crew arrived with bolt cutters to forcibly remove us.
By then, the resident artists had formed the Scotts Church Artists Association (SCAA), with a president, vice president, and a shared bank account. We had been unofficially occupying the space for over a year.
Through City of Sydney Council negotiations, we were allowed to stay. The council didn’t want the site vacant during the 2000 Olympics, fearing the historic building might be destroyed.
The developers relented, offering us a newly fitted basement studio—rent-free for a year. It became a vibrant hub of exhibitions, parties, and creative exchange.
In that basement space, I began seriously exploring abstraction.
I returned to a university idea: a large-scale drawing made by pacing in front of a wall-sized sheet, marking rhythmic, meditative patterns.
At the time, my lecturer Richard Goodwin—an artist I respect greatly—was intrigued but uncertain.
Now, in the Scotts Church basement, I revisited the idea with paint. Each line was guided by instinct—responding, diverging, flowing—within the limits of the canvas. The process balanced repetition and improvisation.
Shifting from representational to abstract work wasn’t immediate. Often, figures would emerge uninvited—but I welcomed them anyway. Maybe even encouraged them.
Black Possum Gallery 