It’s been raining for the past four days at my artist residency in at BigCi - Bilpin International Ground for Creative Initiatives in the Blue Mountains.
This means a much longer drying time for my paper landscapes. I decided to create these paper pulp paintings as a way to build on the ideas that had started when I was here a year ago. I spent a few days between the rain showers walking into the bush to take photos of the trees regenerating after the huge bushfires of December 2019.
Black skeletons of trees poking up and fallen over amongst the green growth of strong saplings, shedding their burnt bark like a snake sheds its skin.
The first landscape was very experimental and freeform, the second and third more formally contained within the silk screen that they are created to dry on. I’ve now branched into fractal forms relating to the beautiful shapes on the bark.
I’ve been pouring these as individual forms then adding them on the wall to the freeform landscapes. It’s a huge amount of fun and reminds me of the felt board pictures I used to make as a kid.
What amazes me is the range of colours in the bark. It’s exciting to mix the coloured pulps together, as they each have a piece of my clothing in them. The green is from my shorts I bought in The USA when I was there for a paper making internship in 2013, the blue from a pair of beautiful pants I bought in France but they developed an unmendable gash in them so into the pulp beater they went. There’s a bit of me in every tree and leaf!
I feel very privileged to be able to create in this huge shared studio space and have arty conversations with the two other artists who are here with me Camie Lyons and Sally Kidall. I’ve found I learn so much from being surrounded by other professionals each working within their own discipline and in their own way.
We are having an Open Day on Easter Sunday 4th April so I will be once again demonstrating pouring a paper world and inviting people to contribute to its making. All my experimental paper ‘drawings’ will be exhibited on the walls and I’ll be joining the other two artists giving talks about our studio experiences here. You can download the program invite here.
A landscape reflected in puddles - making mud and water marks on paper