Every plant is its own exquisite colour world ...

Where have all the colours gone?

National Carillon as Memorial for Lost Temperate Grasslands

I often get asked by architects; “how do you convince your clients to use particular colours, or to be bold with colour?”

When I design a mural, I am trying to make a work that responds to, and is inspired by the place, or the context of the mural – that is – the physical environment, the architecture itself, and the surrounding environment.

The colours for this refurbishment of a former Bourke Street Bakery, into Paper Bird (a modern Korean) restaurant in Potts Point, created a kind of inner world.

The opportunity offered by the semi underground space allowed us to create a self contained world, with a unique atmosphere.

I like to create colour palettes inspired by real things in the world.

A colour wheel is not in itself a design tool.

The ‘colour world’ is much more complex and beautiful.

Bondi Beach is big, lively, beautiful … and people certainly don’t go there to look at a ‘dunny’ block. So, for the North Bondi Public Amenities, colour was used to camouflage and harmonise the toilets with the environment rather than to make them stand out.

So many houses exhibit the same neutral colour schemes. Intended to be polite, they avoid scrutiny and arouse little passion. I believe generic colour schemes disengage the end user.