My work as a painter did not begin with painting. It began with a lifelong fascination with how images are constructed, communicated and remembered.
Long before I became a painter, I was captivated by cinema and visual storytelling. As a teenager, I taught myself Photoshop—not as a professional ambition, but as a way of engaging directly with the films and television series that shaped my imagination. I created alternative movie posters and DVD covers for shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, intuitively exploring composition, typography and visual hierarchy.
That fascination gradually became a profession. I studied Multimedia Design before working as a 2D and 3D animator, producing television commercials, music videos and broadcast graphics for clients including Honda, Mazda, Myer, Target and Nickelodeon, as well as recording artists such as Gotye and The Potbelleez. I later moved into graphic design and signwriting, where working with vinyl introduced a more physical understanding of image construction.
Across each of these disciplines, the underlying pursuit remained the same: understanding how images are assembled, structured and given meaning.
When I eventually returned to painting, cinema became the catalyst. My early works explored movie posters, portraits and scenes from the films that had influenced me, before evolving through experimentation with different subjects and techniques. Looking back, this return to cinema feels less like a new direction and more like a continuation of a lifelong relationship with constructed imagery.
Today, my practice brings together the disciplines that shaped me—cinema, graphic design, animation and material image-making—translated through the language of paint.
Australia gave me the technical foundation. Animation taught me how images are constructed. Cinema gave me the visual language. Italy provided the cultural landscape in which those elements could converge.
Moving from Australia to Italy was a decision to place myself closer to the visual traditions that had long inspired me. After years working across animation, graphic design and commercial image-making, I wanted to dedicate myself more fully to a practice centred around craftsmanship, storytelling and the enduring power of carefully constructed images.
Italy did not create my artistic language, but it provided the environment in which it could mature.
My relationship with classic cinema began through a single recommendation during university.
A friend working at a local video store suggested Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder. Up to that point, my understanding of older films had been limited. Hitchcock’s precision, combined with Grace Kelly’s presence on screen, revealed a visual language defined by control, framing and implication rather than excess or explanation.
From that moment, I began to explore the broader landscape of Hollywood’s Golden Age, moving through the work of directors such as Billy Wilder, Vincente Minnelli, Stanley Donen and George Cukor. What began as casual viewing developed into a sustained interest in the visual grammar of mid-century cinema.
The Hays Code era is particularly significant in this regard. Its restrictions encouraged a form of visual communication based on suggestion rather than explicitness. Meaning was carried through gesture, composition, lighting and restraint, qualities that continue to inform how I think about painting.
My engagement with mid-century visual culture extends beyond cinema into the broader visual environment I have chosen to live with over time.
Mad Men, when it first appeared, did not introduce this aesthetic to me so much as confirm it. It distilled many of the visual qualities I already associated with mid-century cinema: restrained typography, deliberate composition, structured interiors and a slower, more intentional approach to communication.
Rather than forming the basis of my interest, it reinforced an existing one.
The homepage of this website is a constructed composition assembled from mid-century visual material drawn from my own collection and practice. It brings together original posters, advertisements, and related imagery that share a common visual language with my painting practice, rather than depicting a physical or lived environment. Each element functions as part of a broader constructed narrative: some are original posters I own, others reference films or design material that have shaped my visual thinking, and others relate directly to earlier or current paintings within the VetroScope series. The image is intended as an edited field of influences and personal references — a visual index of the sources, objects, and ideas that inform how I construct images in paint.
My work frequently begins in black and white, where image-making is reduced to structure alone.
In this reduced state, light, shadow, composition and form become the primary concerns. The absence of colour creates clarity and a particular sense of timelessness.
Colour is introduced only when it is required. It is never automatic.
In some cases, it reflects the emotional atmosphere of specific films. The warm tonal range of Roman Holiday suggests sunlight and atmosphere, while Funny Face uses soft pinks associated with fashion illustration and mid-century graphic simplification.
In other cases, colour is inseparable from the structure of the work itself. Films such as The Band Wagon and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes depend on Technicolor as part of their visual identity rather than as surface treatment.
Across both approaches, the principle remains consistent: only what is necessary is included.
Alongside cinema, I have maintained a continuous engagement with printed material from the same period.
Over many years I have collected magazine advertisements, design books, fashion publications and cinema ephemera. These are not treated as reference material alone, but as objects that form part of my everyday visual environment.
This archive exists in parallel with my painting practice rather than serving it directly. It reflects a broader way of understanding images as constructed systems rather than isolated compositions.
Looking back, the continuity is evident. The films I watched, the posters I collected, the advertisements I lived with, and the years spent working across animation, design and signwriting all contribute to the way I construct images today. Painting did not replace these interests; it consolidated them into a single practice.
