In 2009, I set myself a challenge: to produce 100 paintings, each with its own story. Some would be based on childhood memories, others on personal experiences, and some would be completely invented. Together, these works would form a collection of images linked by nostalgia, imagination, and the many things that have influenced my life. I named the project 1 in 100. What started as a simple idea has become my apprenticeship and an ongoing process of learning the craft of being an artist.

 

I was brought up in Ōtaki, a small town on the Kāpiti Coast, in the 1970s and early 1980s, and it was a great place to be a child. Our world comprised the backyard, the river, the beach and the adjoining paddocks. We built go-karts from timber, used pram wheels, raced them down the hill, and repaired them whenever they broke. My brother and I put together Airfix model planes and tanks, made rubber-powered balsa wood aeroplanes and built tree huts in the Macrocarpas beyond our back fence.

 

As a teenager, summers seemed to last forever; our mother drove us to the bridge over the Ōtaki River with our tyre tubes, and we floated down the river, arriving home in the late afternoon, exhausted, hungry, and ready for sleep. We played backyard cricket in our cul-de-sac, and childhood adventures needed only a few friends and a good imagination. We enjoyed tremendous freedom, though I don’t think our parents always knew what we were doing.

 

These experiences now provide an endless supply of ideas. Stumps returns to the street cricket of my childhood, whereas Field of Dreams goes back to the rugby fields in Ōtaki. Indian Summer and Secret Place examine the freedom children experience when a tyre swing or a hut tucked among the trees becomes the focal point of their entire universe. In One More Game, the well-known swing ball game reminds us of the summer holidays when nobody wanted the day to end.

 

Memory, on the other hand, is an unreliable narrator because it tends to edit what it has recorded, exaggerate certain points, and sometimes make up details. I do enjoy this aspect. I am not aiming to give a historically accurate reconstruction of the past; rather, I am interested in how those experiences feel to me now and how they can be turned into something that might resonate with someone else’s memories.

 

In this collection, toys have taken on the role of important characters. Tinplate cars, clockwork boats, model aeroplanes, robots, and rockets appear in landscapes and domestic environments, where they gain a life beyond their original function. The Bluebird and Golden Arrow toy cars highlight the optimism and remarkable design of early land-speed record cars, while Moon Patrol and Odyssey to the Stars capture the excitement of the space race, when travelling to another world seemed almost magical.

 

I was six years old when Apollo 17 landed on the Moon. The grainy black-and-white television pictures stayed with me. Maybe that is why I have a special fondness for tin rockets and the wonderfully improbable spaceships toy manufacturers designed. I remain fascinated by their bright colours, exaggerated shapes, and mechanical ingenuity.

 

The toy yachts and ships in the pond, pool or sea tell a different kind of story: in Maiden Voyage, Grand Voyage, and The Sentinel, a vintage Märklin toy ship journeys through imaginary worlds, some peaceful, others threatening. In Line Honours and Rooftop Regatta, the fragile pond yachts are placed in environments that seem far too big or dangerous for them. Scale becomes part of the storytelling, since a small object can imply a much larger journey.

 

The dogs, Jack, Scottie, Jill, and more recently Alice, our Labradoodle, have also become regular characters. Alice arrived in 2013 and has provided plenty of material. Because of her fixation on tennis balls and her unwillingness to go into the swimming pool, don’t get me wrong, Alice loves water, but her game was to push the ball into the water for someone to retrieve. Alice has a remarkable capacity to find happiness in the simplest things; she has inspired works such as What Now?, Temptation, Obsession, and Daydreaming. The most familiar aspects of everyday life can sometimes contain the richest stories.

 

Although nostalgia is a major source of inspiration, I don’t want the paintings to feel sentimental. Just as important are humour, uncertainty, expectation and, on occasion, something more intriguing. The first painting in the series, Decision, shows a situation filled with uncertainty. Surprise raises questions about a relationship without answering them. Greed and Pride examine less admirable aspects of human behaviour. I like to leave sufficient room for the viewer to formulate their own story.

 

I didn’t train in fine art, but in design and illustration. In 1990, I started as a visualiser at Ted Bates, an advertising agency in Wellington; it was both my first and only full-time job. During that time, I developed the habit of thinking quickly and drawing efficiently. These lessons have stayed with me, even though painting has required a very different kind of patience.

 

My method has two clear stages. The first stage is “the big idea”; this is where it all begins. I use sketchbooks to gather ideas, explore possibilities, and I return to concepts that may never progress past the sketchbook. In some cases, a painting starts with an object; in others, with a memory; and, on rare occasions, simply with a title.

 

I seldom base my work on just one photograph. Instead, I create an image using several references, altering perspective, playing with light, and modifying scale to achieve a suitable composition. Although the final scene might seem familiar, even plausible, it generally depicts a place that doesn’t actually exist.

 

One of the first things that influenced me was the View-Master, that fantastic little stereoscopic toy of the 1970s. When I looked at the pictures, I was amazed that an ordinary image could become a tiny world with incredible depth. That impression has stayed with me, and I still see images in layers: the foreground, the middle distance, and the background working together to draw the viewer in.

 

Colour is just as important; in many respects it serves as the emotional trigger of the paintings. A bright blue sky may suggest the freedom associated with summer, whereas the cool violet light of evening brings a sense of uncertainty. Warm light coming through a window can feel reassuring even when the world outside seems threatening. I enjoy how complementary colours relate to one another, for example, the vivid intensity of a red object against green grass, or how a small area of yellow can bring the whole composition to life.

 

The next phase involves the actual painting. I use oil paint on linen, adding colour and detail by applying layer after layer of paint and glazes. I find the physical aspect very enjoyable, and mixing colours, refining edges, working on the surface and watching the image slowly come into being is one of the greatest joys of my career.

 

It’s comforting to repeat the same actions. Painting grass, water or the fine details of an old tin toy can take hours of focused attention. This feels much like the model-making I used to enjoy as a child. Although the tools are different and mistakes are now much more costly, the pleasure of making things by hand is the same.

 

Experience does not eliminate frustration; each new painting brings a different set of problems. Sometimes I overthink an idea, get distracted by unnecessary details, or forget why I was drawn to the subject in the first place. Finding a balance between methodical planning and intuition is always a challenge, and sometimes the best thing to do is stop thinking and start painting.

 

I usually finish four paintings each year, a routine that gives me enough time to develop both ideas and technical skills. The discipline I’ve gained from aiming at exhibitions has taught me to plan my days, weeks, and months by establishing small goals that eventually become completed canvases. Although inspiration is wonderful, consistency keeps the work progressing.

 

Over the years, I have become aware of another theme that keeps appearing. Many of the paintings deal with journeys, departures, arrivals, and what may happen afterwards. The ship in the painting Intentions, the aeroplanes in Freedom and Final Flight, and the faraway destinations implied in Into the Blue all feel full of possibility. Maybe this is an unconscious expression of the project itself.

 

At the start of the 1 in 100 project, I asked myself at what stage I could properly consider myself an artist—would that be after ten paintings, fifty, or only when I had finished all one hundred? It made sense to believe that at some point I would reach a stage where things became easier, with confidence replacing uncertainty and experience supplying all the answers.

 

That hasn’t happened; the questions remain, and so does the work.

 

The way I see the process has changed. I now place a bit more faith in my instincts, have come to realise that some ideas take time to develop and that mistakes are an inevitable aspect of producing something worthwhile, and I have also realised that the paintings often show things which I hadn’t deliberately intended, since connections emerge between works made years apart, objects that recur gain new meanings, and stories which at first appeared to have no connection start to come together to form a broader picture.

 

The biggest surprise has been realising that personal memories can become common experiences. For example, when someone looks at a painting, they might recall a childhood holiday, a favourite toy, a treasured dog, or a place they last thought about decades ago. Although their story could be entirely different from mine, the connection is just as important. Once a painting leaves the studio, it starts to lead its own life.

 

The closer I get to completing this project, the more I realise how much of my life I’ve incorporated into these pictures. They don’t just preserve what I remember; they also reflect the person I have become in the process of making them. Among them are great successes, disappointments, difficult decisions, and real moments of discovery. Through it all, the simple enjoyment of making something new has stayed the same.

 

I used to think finishing 100 paintings would mark the end of my apprenticeship, but now I’m not so sure. The nearer I get to that point, the more I realise there is still a great deal to learn.

 

Maybe becoming an artist isn’t the end of the road at all; it might just be about keeping on showing up, staying curious, taking risks, and discovering something worthwhile to say through paint.

 

In 2009, creating one hundred paintings seemed like an enormous task. Now, however, the number itself matters less than the stories, memories, and surprising connections made during the process.

I still have that same sensation whenever a new idea starts to develop in my sketchbook.​