Painting

I have lived and worked in the bush with my partner Susan Crookes for more than 25 years. One particularly evocative and remote place, in WA, was Pantapin, on Nyoongar Country. It had been an old railway-siding in the central wheatbelt, surrounded by remnant bushland. The landscape to me, was reminiscent of the old spaghetti westerns that I’d watched on TV and later, read in books such as That Old Ace in the Hole and Tobacco Road, that formed a backdrop for the imagined landscape in my paintings – making a connection between the music that speaks to me, the paintings, and my own lived experience.

The narratives of long journeys, of place and character, in traditional and contemporary American folk music (such as Charlie Parr, Doc Boggs, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings) coupled with those of Anglo-Celtic folk music (such as Bert Jansch, June Tabor and John Renbourne) resonate with my experience as a migrant, artist and musician.

This body of work is a mixture of traditional oil painting and more modern techniques using mixed media and collage. I mostly work directly onto the canvas with just an image in my mind and allow an intuitive sense of colour and painterly feel, to bring out the image that I’m searching for.

(Text by Paul Lacey, artist, 2025)

Homebodies is my latest collection of paintings in acrylic on board and canvas. While I was working on these paintings of companion animals, I was holding in mind, ideas around the personal, domestic sanctuary of Home and how it seems that increasingly, more people are identifying unapologetically, as homebodies, preferring the company of their pets to people.

The things and people we surround ourselves with, grounds us and tempers our sense of vulnerability to the world outside our bubble. They keep us motivated, co-regulate our nervous systems, and help us to recharge and find our equilibrium.