The coming tales relate to my life and the adventures and events that inspired my works of art.

“Upbeat NeoPop” is a concept being proposed by Rae Heint, and due to its connotations is drawing attention from young scholars in Australia. It is Upbeat because it is cheerful and optimistic. Mankind has always been infested with images, and many of them, unimaginative, aggressive and even irritating. We must stop and question? Do we like it? Is this where we want to be? Where are we going? We come to a fundamental question in our existence. Where have we come from? Where are we now? And where are we going? As artists we must be able to answer. Our global society, our multicultural way of life is brightly coloured and cheerful. Just look around us.

Mark making ideas involved in the construction of the work, relate to antecedent styles that began back in the1960′s. Here in Upbeat NeoPop, symbols, hard edge, a considerable degree of unmixed colour, and decorativeness are valued. Paintings are three dimensional. Popular culture changes, it moves forward, therefore our knowledge of the significance of symbols follows.

Symbols are used to create an ideal world. It is a safe environment where we can experiment and play. We leave behind our early signs, some of which were almost consumable. (soup cans for example. Symbols that relate to the corporate world and convenience stores.) Our intent has changed. Figurative images, and in particular, figures that are products of popular culture, introduces the eccentric element of playfulness. Images from the animal kingdom remain important. They remind us of another existence that parallels that of human life. Sometimes they are signifiers pointing the way to stories. They bring us into contact with personal mythologies; they may spring from the reality of past events (history for example), past personal experience (the creators subconscious), or perhaps from no specific place at all (places or event not as yet understood by mankind). Mark making is an artists way of traveling and the resulting picture is a metaphor for the experience. Here we exist in a place between reality and illusion. It is a place from which we can move forward, continuously shedding the prisons of our own creation, in the same way as a lizard sheds it’s skin and moves on, into a fresh new season.