I lived in Switzerland for a period of 6 years in a small picturesque lakeside town called Vevey. It was during this time, that I started to paint seriously again after many years of teaching art at high school level.

I was always drawn to the vintage aesthetics of old French New wave movies directed by Jean Luc Goddard with his experimental cinematography, split screens and use of captions. I often watched them to observe the fashion, cinematography and captions which I would try to capture when designing. I was also drawn to vivid, neon colors rather than naturalistic tones. I used the inspiration of French New Wave cinema from movies such as Le Mepris and Une Femme Est Une Femmeto to create a series of semi abstract portraits divided horizontally to create distortion and capture a glitch like effect. I painted a range of retro icons including Anna Karina, Sofia Loren to Debbie Harry although technically she was not part of that era but I still felt she was iconic in the way she presented herself with her windswept sidewards hair and chiseled cheekbones.