Latitude 26 and me…

I think I must be a frustrated sailor/handyman/creative. It’s perhaps the easiest way to explain how this all came to be.

I’ve always loved the water. I started sailing in my first dinghy as a youngster about 50 years ago and have been around the ocean and boats most of my life. Big boats, little boats, fast boats and slow, old graceful boats. If I’m in the surf or on the water I’m in my happy place.

My Dad was always tinkering with things and had a love of timber, so he was always showing me how to build things with wood. Practical things like a dinghy cradle through to impractical things like a really cool billy cart so I could race down a hill and break my arm!

After 35+ years as a Graphic Designer in the corporate design and advertising game, I started to want for a different direction for my creative ideas. Naturally, I was drawn to my happy place.

I noticed that there was a market for customised nautical things, and signs made from the nautical alphabet could provide a bit of fun to the terrific community of boaties out there. So I got to work with my old drop saw and some paint and started to make some fun signs for friends. Thus the original Nautallica brand was born.

Based on a lifestyle move to the Sunshine Coast, my love of maps started to beckon me to play with colours and coastal charts - creating simple, artistic maps worthy of framing and adorning a wall in a home.

Latitude 26 coastal artwork soon became the major creative focus and then the main brand for my work, with Nautallica© signs, Nautees© tee shirts, Aye-Charts and Aye Glasses© all comfortably fitting under the beach umbrella.

For me, the move to the warmer latitudes of the Sunshine Coast has been both a blessing and the beginning of a new chapter. One where I can enjoy the paradise we live in and create my artwork for people to enjoy.

– Peter