The framework and aesthetic principles of my creative life developed early through intense and frequent contact with my aunt, the artist Dora Chapman. Growing up in my grandmother’s house - Dora’s childhood home - I was surrounded despite her absence, by her paintings and object collections. The beauty and sophistication of this situation captivated me, incited my curiosity and imagination and prompted me to seek her out. I realised even as a young man that her presence was to be of great importance to me.

As a young schoolgirl, Dora Chapman won a scholarship to the South Australian School of Art and thus connected with a long and important lineage of artists such as Ivor Hele, Nora Heysen, Horace Trennery. She worked with passion, drive and commitment, eventually forging an important and respected artistic career.

The years spent in close daily contact with Dora formed for me an intense period of artistic study, providing a conduit to another world, creative, sophisticated, and with different expectations and possibilities to those generally embedded in my provincial surrounds. Here grew a new framework for my life.

Dora taught me to be meticulous, committed, thoughtful, skilful and experimental in my explorations. A life of observation and making followed, with workings across a variety of channels including stained glass, building and garden design, and eventually leading to ceramics. There is something about the finesse and quality of porcelain as a material that provides me with an instrument of expression that now facilitates the true manifestation of a lifetime of learning.

During one period, decades ago, I worked with Dora on the prints in this exhibition, scrupulously placing the layered colours and absorbing her instruction. Such memorable exploration of colour is reflected now in my ceramics work. It is an exhibition crossing decades of time and meticulous learning.