It was this guy’s 30th recently. Naturally, it slipped by almost unnoticed — you avoid being the focus like it’s the social plague.
Between the tornado of work and finding our feets in VIC, we’ve had a bit on! Still, the past few months have somehow included all your favourite things: Peter, pastries, weekend drives, visiting mates, broken rice and broken beats. Love you @jrogers_smith
Decided to reorganise my studio today, and it was a nice chance to flick through some of my book collection I keep for collaging.
I seem to gravitate towards any book from this era where objects of significance (often held in institutions) are presented in a particular way. They’re so stylised that the images and the books themselves also feel like artefacts.
When collaging, I’m working with the ‘non-image’ (the backgrounds or voids of these images) so my compositions amplify those thresholds between object and space — visibility and intentional omission.
I haven’t been painting much lately, which usually sends me into deep thinking (spiralling) mode.
Public art always yanks me between realism and abstraction. Because I have some ability to recreate recognisable forms at scale, there’s a part of me that wants to offer folks something familiar to grab onto — especially when painting in public. Viewers finding joy in recognition is a joy that’s shared.
But the parts that excite me most are always abstract. Made intuitively, and revelling in ambiguity.
The artists I most admire work in this way too — less thinking, more feeling, more doing.
Collage allows me to oscillate between the two, but it’s always been a tension. The more I invite realism back in, the more the work becomes so-called “legible” and therefore simple, yet shared. The more I retreat into abstraction, the more it turns inward — quieter, complex, solitary.
I’ll probably spiral on this thought until I’m no longer able to have them 💭
While I often keep my worlds distinct, the last five years in brand strategy over at @front__office have really bled into how I conceptualise large scale artwork, develop visual systems, and help people to experience space.
@foxcoffeeau remains a favourite collaboration — Corinne has a vision and is on a mission! What began as a mural evolved into a broader visual language: packaging (beans, cold brew, bottled goods), merchandise, wayfinding, and collateral — all anchored in the palette and textures of the original wall work…I’m a systems girly 💅
@jackgibson.photo captured their stunning recent reno.
Consider this a soft launch of the “other things I do” …let’s see if my sharing mood holds up!
A few more from a recent week up north with @rick.s.hayward for @queenslandrail
Mapping architecture, sketching with a big stick, and immortalising shadows…all in a week’s work 🦺🫡
It’s been a great week adding colour to this @queenslandrail corridor with @rick.s.hayward in Bowen Hills, Brisbane.
Celebrating 15 years of paintings with Ricko, and 10 years of working with QR to add colour to transient spaces 🚶♀️🚶🏾
Very grateful to @danielbrock who provides these opportunities, and trusts artists to respond intentionally. This one was a fun experiment in play!
Painting is still so important to me — helping to quieten a mind that is often too busy and tender, especially in a world that’s really aching right now. I hope this small patch of wall brings a moment of calm to passers by.
Four months since moving from Meanjin → Naarm, and I’m finally coming up for air 😮💨
Grateful to have landed at @wrap_au with the most generous, talented team. From our Brunswick studio, we work with architects, developers and government agencies to ensure art isn’t just a decorative afterthought, but contributes meaningfully to culture and place, and is a true extension of an artist’s practice.
After years supporting emergent arts, it means a lot to be somewhere that doesn’t just speak its values, but enacts them daily.
A few shots from the street-level window gallery I helped bring together — free for artists to exhibit at the Brunswick Rd x Nicholson St intersection — launched with these STUNNING works by @jeremyblincoe ✨
2025 was big and hard and inspiring and long, and exciting and draining and loving and lonely and familiar and renewing. Made better as always by music, people and Peter 🤎
Hope 2026 is good to you all good people.
I’ve been home from an overseas artist residency for a few weeks now, and it’s taken some time to name what the experience actually gave me.
Not creative ascension. Not a new body of work. And certainly not the romantic reset we’re taught to expect through social media.
Artist residencies are often draped in this mythology — that removal from daily life, foreign placement, and dedicated space will dissolve burnout and deliver creative enlightenment. Two weeks, a new landscape, and suddenly everything should click. Right?
The reality was quieter and harder. I arrived 1 1/2 hours outside of Mexico City with no creative fuel left in my tank, fresh off an interstate relocation in Aus, and newly immersed in a job that I genuinely love. I went anyway, invested in the promise that if I just did this, it would fix my creative block.
Instead, the distance amplified what was missing. Isolation in a regional town, limited language comprehension, long stretches alone with my own thoughts (and that’s before all the logistical disappointments of the mural) Meanwhile, from afar: 𝙄𝙩 𝙢𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙗𝙚 𝙞𝙣𝙘𝙧𝙚𝙙𝙞𝙗𝙡𝙚. 𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝙢𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙗𝙚 𝙡𝙤𝙫𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙞𝙩. 𝙄𝙩 𝙢𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙗𝙚 𝙖𝙢𝙖𝙯𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙥𝙧𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙚. I found myself nodding my head, with a heavy chest.
What the residency gave me wasn’t artistic revelation, but a personal one. Being so far away clarified how much I adore my life at home — my partner, my dog, my work, and all the other little things that surround my sporadic artistic output.
It wasn’t the residency I imagined. But it reminded me that creative health isn’t always found in the pursuit of experiences, but the rest from them 💭 I only share to add an honest layer to the residency mythology.
Tranquilidad is Jilotepec’s first housing development. A regional town about 2 hours out of Mexico City.
When I met with the architect, Tony, he spoke proudly about the project’s commitment to access and environment: each home built uses entirely local materials, native species removed during construction are replanted in the gardens,
and the design keeps construction costs low so homes remain affordable for the community.
Despite its admirable aspirations, I still couldn’t help but notice a disconnect. The mural combines photographs I took of neighbourhood wall textures in both Mexico City and Jilotepec, collaged with imagery sourced from the extensive @cobertizomx library.
It felt important to work directly with the surface qualities I saw in my immediate surroundings - all the good textures come from years of renovation, repair, layering, adding narratives…not from the glossy brochures.
Painting at the entrance to the development — a public space accessible to the whole community — felt especially important…just always thinking about inside and outside, public and private.
It’s not my biggest wall, but it’s been a meaningful one for me 🤝🇲🇽
