But I Am Still And You Are Still

This project explores my relationship with regularly visited landscapes that, on arrival, reveal a new or expanded meaning about myself, others, nature, or a higher good. The project explores landscapes familiar to me and the sublime peace that they invoke through a series of oil paintings.

The paintings look with tenderness on important water ways in my life. They document journeys of small vistas and arrivals at sky and water that welcome you with wide-open moments of serenity.

Prompted by the 2020 Black Summer 2020 bushfire devastation to the landscape that was a source of exploration for me as a child, I realised I had a deep anxiety about the survival of birds and plants at this place and wanted to mark the area’s importance to me. At Double Creek, where I grew up in Victoria, a walking trail progresses from temperate rainforest through melaleuca forest to an open estuarine space at the head of a vast lake system. This walk and its endpoint at the lake has been a pilgrimage for me over 40 years. These works explore the calm and momentous still, through application of oil paint for depth, intensity and quiet.

These works are about loss and renewal while pivoting around the open sense of space, stillness and peace. The landscape changes, but the places are there offering refuge and solace. There has never been a more important time to engage with our fragile environment.