Kakadu in Flood No15 Painting

Graham McBride, while living in London, considers himself an Australian painter. He is also an environmental scientist and private researcher who loves nothing more, besides painting, travelling to unusual places. He sells and exhibits his works primarily in Australia, UK and the USA. Comments made about Graham's work often mention energetic, expressive and with a strong sense of colour. His work lives in the spectrum between abstract and figurative, and to what part of that spectrum he explains in terms of how he engages and responds to the subject. Events or moments would probably say much about what his paintings are about. He is attracted to occurrences or things that evoke or create change, whether they be by nature or human instigation. Such moments heighten consciousness and awareness, enabling him to see and understand things in different lights or emphasis. Graham came to painting from a very unusual and complex background. Born in tropical Cairns, north Queensland Australia, he spent his growing up years both there and in the dry and dusty landscape of the western plains. His early training was as a metal tradesman, working in sugar milling factories on the coast. From there he studied science followed by postgraduate studies in engineering and environments. He relates that discovering van Gogh was what really got him going in art, and hence saw painting as the medium to explore and express feelings from the beauty and drama he saw around him. Travel is clearly a great source of inspiration, he is often attracted to trees as a motif. It is the expressiveness combining fluidity and solidity plus how they indicate, express and symbolise place and space that engages him. In his practice he says "I deeply enjoy immersing myself in the act of painting with all its potential and uncertainty. My process can sometimes seem like an explosion of energy, bypassing normal consciousness; other times I will slowly develop and resolve the work. Hence my work can vary between being quite abstract to more figurative. I don’t like to be contained to working in a defined style or technique. I paint as what seems appropriate at the time using oils, acrylic or mixed media." He now lives in London working from a studio overlooking the Regents Canal, which he says gives him a sense of space he yearns for.