Renascent

Beaver Galleries, 16 February – 5 March 2017

This exhibition is a contemplation of the resident birds, planted and native trees in the local environment around my North Canberra Studio. I approach my images as an exploration, letting them build like memories and grow upon themselves and while making these images, Timothy Leary’s poem “All Things Pass” an adaptation of the Tao Te Ching has also been the muse, ever present in the back of my mind.

I started my alphabet of images by cutting linocuts of flowers with pollinators from mine and surrounding gardens. That alphabet has expanded to include the trees and birds. Each tree is unique, weathered, beautiful, and threatened by urban renewal. They stand strong, while the birds pay witness, against the charge of a constantly renegotiated habitat.

With these works, the print and painting come together and are part of the surface and story, some things stay while others disappear then reappear new. I have tried to keep to the essence of the poem and to “Take things as they come”, and to find peace with the environmental changes imposed by urban development. I have endeavoured to capture the understanding “that all things pass” in both nature and ourselves. To know that nature is capable and adaptable, able to regenerate into something beautiful and divergent.