THE EXHIBITION "COMPANIONS' 

The following is part of my speech which highlights my feelings about why I like to make art featuring my favourite subject, birds................

......."Well, I love painting birds.  I like to bring them into focus and tell their story.
 
When I was young I loved the images of John Gould’s paintings, I collected bird cards and treasured a beautiful tin of 24 shades of Derwent Coloured Pencils.  Birds as well as other wildlife have been part of my life from when I was a child.
 
I know they enhance my life as well as being a crucial part of the environment.
  
I hear King Parrots making music in the forest.
 
Feisty Willy Wagtails will peck and pester anything bigger than itself to move it away from their nest.  I observed one day a Willy Wagtail giving an Osprey a hiding. Just amazing.
 
Noisy Miners which I regard as the soldiers of the yard, will always let you know when there is a snake or a goanna around  and ..then there are the little birds that stay close to the undergrowth and the marvellous snowy whiteness of a majestic sea eagle that soars over our beaches ….. and so many other species.. 
 
 I find them all smart and interesting as well as being quite beautiful.  They inspire me.

But they need their wild places, they need nest hollows in the big old trees and little birds need undergrowth and often when I’m painting I’m thinking about how precious our forests and wild places are and I think of my grandchildren and hope that when they have children they can take them walking through tall green forests and listen to the songs of our Companions, the birds."