Here are some images I have collected over my travels. They inspire me to keep doing what I do. To keep looking for detail and to always be learning from the subjects that inspire me.
So many people and places inspire the best in me and help me to feel grateful for the chance to meet and be part of different cultures.I bring it all back home and mix it up with textures and form, shape and colour, and hopefully achieve some of the joy and elation I found in places that need less to keep them happy than we do in our complicated world.
To share a moment with an Indian craftsman carving a door in the heat and the dust of Rajasthan and to know that this carving will eventually be installed in a home so very different to his own but will include the integrity of his spirit and the skill of his hands and breathe a little authenticity and purpose into our hurried lives.
Nature naturally is a great inspiration and the verdant hills and wildlife I find in our little house in the hinterland of Byron bay Australia provides a rejuvenation on a yearly basis. Each time I visit, I kick back and let a kind of feral existence take over. We spend hours watching the platypus in our creek, eating outside on the veranda with all the aussie mates, and weekends at the eclectic markets where many innovative young designers sell their wares. I find Australians very inventive and eager to use their beautiful natural surroundings as inspiration for their designs.
France is the country I have chosen to call home, although aussie blood runs proud in my veins. The Languedoc makes me dizzy with all the amazing things to do in the summer. Watching the young bulls being swum down stream in Sommieres, with the cowgirls on their white Cammargue horses, Eating the fresh ingredients from all the local weekly markets, visiting the brocantes and collecting and sourcing beautiful antiques for my clients. Taking time out to visit the annual photographic exhibition in August in Arles. Foraging for crazy little things like buttons and bows in the flea markets. Added to this I can spend hours wandering the streets snapping the old shop fronts, colours and the people, faded and elegant in the relentless sun.
Thanks to my photographer son Ben for giving me the clever little Canon G11 to play with.