I started this painting with a paper cut out collage in the area surrounding the figure. This helped to set a tone of play in a style of painting that traditionally would have more serious overtones.

The second of the series THE COLUMNS AND THE OLIVE TREE has Cricket stumps resembling the columns of an ancient Greek ruin, 

The scene represents a suburban backyard typical of European migrants in Australia, where  trees common to a Mediterranean landscape were planted. The plump olives and lively abstracted tree was intended to suggest traditions are enthusiastically retained. on foreign soil.  

In this modern icon I have juxtaposed references to antiquity, and nostalgic images of the motherland (with its cultural and historical ideals) together with the reality of a symbols of a nostalgic Australian suburban backyard.