How Printforprint.co was born…
Every morning I’m in awe of the beauty displayed in front of me. My sense of self is transformed from a simple being into something so much bigger, so much greater than one single person. Rain, hail or shine, in the middle of summer or winter, I start each day in the ocean, in the dark. Nothing but camera and flippers, 50-100m off Manly Beach. Why? I'm waiting for the sun to pop its head over the horizon, to capture its warming rays reflecting off the ocean’s ripples at dawn.
There’s a small window each morning, lasting only a few minutes before the sun becomes too bright in the sky that I’m able to capture the true essence of dawn. To me, it’s like I’m being filled with liquid gold, pouring into every corner of my body and soul.
Nothing was going to take me away from this as it was my daily ritual. That was until August 2018, when my world crashed, literally. I was knocked off my motorbike causing massive injuries, including an almost severed left leg.
I was about to spend months in hospital unable to use either arms or leg, unable to feel or wash myself, eight months with metal scaffolding drilled literally through my leg and at least 18 months if not forever in a wheelchair. Yet no matter what the surgeons told me about my gloomy future I said stuff that!
The imprint on my brain of those few minutes each morning drove me so hard to recover that after just 10 months I kicked the wheelchair away. By month 12, I was back in the water shooting the sunrises, by month 15, amazingly surfing again…
There is still pain and new movement restrictions that I am still trying to get use to but I now know that my mindset wasn’t a fluke. Research consistently shows that calming and inspirational images, especially those with biophilic and colour psychology elements, greatly assist patient rehabilitation. It shows this type of art in hospital rooms reducing pain levels, the reliance on painkillers, and therefore positively effecting recovery times and length of stay in the hospital. It dramatically improves state of mind of the patient, but also delivers these amazingly benefits the visitors & staff
So late last year I launched printforprint.co, a social initiative donating calming art into Australian Public Hospitals. For every image I sell, whether a simple print or a 4m x 3m framed Canvas, I donate 50% of all the profits to producing framed biophilic images to be installed into public hospital rooms, not just the hallways…
If I can give one person a window into my dawns and put them even slightly onto the same path, I have succeeded.