There is so much collective grief at the state of the world, it often feels overwhelming. I know my tendency is to shut off from the world when I feel deep mourning for what we have collectively lost in our compassion for suffering, both environmental and human.
Yet there is great joy to be found when being in nature, engaging in passionate creativity, feeling sunshine and wind on my face and know that I am breathing and alive.
How to hold this duality of grief and joy? It’s something I’ve been exploring in a new series of work that emerged slowly from last year’s residencies at Tootgarook, Victoria and Takayna forest, Tasmania.
Little by little figures appeared in my forest landscapes. Human forms with outstretched arms like the entwined branches of trees. Then in a burst of colour and emotion, I started putting myself into my paper pulp paintings. Entangled in swirling tree branches, diving into the ocean, hair streaming out above and behind me. Totally unexpected and quite surreal.
When I look at these paintings I am reminded of the words of eco-feminist philosopher, Donna Haraway who wrote that we must ‘stay with the trouble”. The key word in this phrase being ‘with’. She could have written ‘in’ and then we would feel subsumed.
When we stay ‘with’ the trouble, we are walking as companions together, co-dependent on figuring out what to do. As Haraway wrote:
“I want to stay with the trouble, and the only way I know to do that is in generative joy, terror, and collective thinking. …whether we asked for it or not, the pattern is in our hands. The answer to the trust of the held-out hand: think we must.”[1]
Four years ago in June 2022 I encountered the Mother of the Sea sculpture in Nuuk, Greenland. The Inuit legend says that when the Mother of the Sea was angry with the people and their irresponsibility, she gathered all the animals and took them down to the bottom of the sea. No animals were left to hunt for food.
The people sent a shaman deep into the sea to comb out the Mother’s long hair which was entangled in the souls of the disrespected animals. Harmony was restored and the shaman returned with the message that that the people need to be respectful of all creatures, to be grateful, to care for their surroundings and not waste their bounty.
I see this entanglement in the wild hair I have painted with my figures. I am both mother and destroyer, needing to hold balance in all that I do. I am not merely a witness, but by ‘staying with the trouble’, as uncomfortable as that is, I can help figure out what to do next. It’s a big responsibility!
[1] Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble : Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Duke University Press, 2016, pps 31 - 36.
Not Waving 2026 (detail) paper pulp painting