When my father asked," where do you want to go this weekend?" my reply was always lets go the Newcastle aerodrome (where the Newcastle Knights stadium is located now). It didn't matter to me whether the planes were flying, stationary, taxiing, taking off or landing. Another memory for me living on Lake Macquarie was going with my father to the western side of the lake and listening for the unmis
takable rumble of a "Catalina" coming into land on the water.This would make my day standing there transfixed. In later years I was a coal miner at John Darling Colliery where I was fortunate to meet a man who had a very distinctive Handle Bar moustache named Bill Hitchcock. He was a passionate Aviation buff, in Bill's mind there was only one aircraft ever made and that being "The Tiger Moth'. At that time I was only dabbling in Aviation Art, my main focus was with Landscapes, Seascapes paintings and occasional Wildlife subjects. In 1990-2005 I stopped painting for a more secure income working as a labourer and guitarist in a band.During all of this my lovely wife 'Lorraine' worked as a nurse to help pay the bills. I never thought about painting at this time until I retired from labouring but I kept playing in the band until it folded. I needed something to fill the void and I didn't want to go back to painting landscapes. One day while looking through my art folder I came across 3 old aircraft paintings that I had considered finished at the time but with a fresh eye I could see they needed more work and spent weeks trying to improve them. I learn't a lot in that time and the more I could see it was a specialty form of art. At the ripe young age of 60 and I have come full circle from a young boy who loved aircraft to a grandfather who still has that passion and now the capacity as an artist to portray those feelings I had in my youth. I hope you enjoy my paintings as much as I enjoyed painting them.
