Gallery Biography Statement News
“ Forest Forms”
My ancestors arrived in Australia from England in 1849. They were pioneers searching for Utopia in a new land believed to be filled with opportunities and a natural beauty beyond imagination.
Indigenous Australians in their Dreamtime Stories talk of the formation of the landscape. Their stories tell of significant places where land, rock and plant forms maintain ancestral spirits. Their lives and belief systems derive from these stories. These people believe that they are the caretakers of their land, that they never own it but are part of the land on which they live.
Although I was born in this country and come from many generations of Australians it has been through traveling and walking on this vast land that I began to understand and experience an intense spirituality that is Australia ‘s natural environment. It is a rugged country, a land of contrasts and I recollect in this series of art works a dichotomy in the beauty and brutality of nature and its affect on the Australian landscape.
This group of works titled “Forest Forms” is an expression of the variety of indigenous trees that survive across Australia . The works are at times a playful interpretation of botanical and common names mixed with ribbon, thread and coloured patterns of paint and ink. These can be seen in ‘Scribbly gum’, ‘Ribbon Gum’ and ‘Diversicolor’.
Although natural storms, floods, fire and drought effect our trees, past generations of white Australians have destroyed vast forests of indigenous trees in the name of ‘progress’. Through using fabrics, some of subtle transparency I endeavour to comment on the disappearance of our forests and bring attention to a fragility within our natural environment that we must consider for future generations.