Cracks in the Edifices: that’s where the light gets in, Oatlands, Tasmania.
You need to be bold when you commit to your line drawing. Especially when it is drawn up in ink. I’ve needed to feel bold when committing to adding motifs of lights and lamps to shine a light on the history of Tasmania with its wars and period of martial law. Cracks in the edifices allows the light to shine in and is the first step in truth telling.
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WIP artist book page, Oatlands, Tasmania
What views did the colonists want to create in their newly invaded and possessed land? Most held ideas about what ‘civilisation’ and ‘society’ meant and so forever changed the landscape to conform to this point of view. My preoccupation has been how to find a gentle way into post colonial viewpoints using windows as portals. To mourn what was lost and hold a vision for the future.
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From the WIP series Colonial Views. Paint, earth & ink on handmade kozo paper
There are so many reasons to feel despondent, especially if you are staying in a place which has a violent history. Yet after two days of drawing murky black ink shapes, I knew I had to find a way through to the other side of despair. Enter Dr Bob Brown and his rallying call to action and keeping hope alive.
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What did these nails hold on the wall of the Commissariat in Oatlands, Tasmania?
Stones, nails, lines of history. The past lives on in the buildings in colonial settler towns like Oatlands where I am an artist in residence. I think of the way we had to write out lines for misdemeanours at school. Now I am thinking of the lines responding to this place that I will make and write while I am in residence here.
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A colllage for Dad ~ his work as a pharmacist
Collages are for me a kind of Memento Mori, a reminder of mortality and that what we do with our lives defines us. Much of our activities can be traced to the objects with which we surround ourselves. Unearthing these early collages from my own archives reveals a biographical portrait of my family ancestry.
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Artist Gabriela Soelkner and myself at the Coalesce exhibition opening at Mist Gallery in Cabarita, NSW.
Whether you are making art or appreciating it in its myriad of forms; immersion in art can be exactly the therapy you need on a grey and dismal day or when life itself feels a little overwhelming. Artists supporting each other gives truth to the saying, when one rises, we all rise together.
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Intense Rains - one of the artworks I sold in my recent exhibition Dispatches from the Arctic: Ice Stories.
What exactly is it that a buyer is looking for when they make the decision to purchase an artwork? Are they looking for an artwork which is the right colour, size or subject to fit into their home decor? Or are they looking for something else entirely? A fissure of pleasure experienced over and over again each time they look at the artwork in their own home?
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Advertising flyers and ticket to three pantomimesI I wrote in the 1990s.
How important is it to archive your creative offerings? As I have been cleaning out the garage I’ve found storage tubs filled with advertisements for past projects as well as old daily journals from the past twenty years. Making decisions about what to archive and what to throw out can become quite a dilemma.
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A selection of old artworks reconfigured as circles
Some themes become our ‘signature’. We may not know it at the time, yet they are the ideas, themes, motifs, colours and forms which repeatedly appear in our artworks, evolving through the years. Mine have been circles, networks of connection that encircle my thinking.
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Urban Dweller (detail) 2024. Collage of a digital print of a collage.
Collage has always been my default artistic practice. Yet last year I abandoned it as if I had ‘grown out of it’. I had quite forgotten the joy of tearing up paper and collaging pieces together. Now I have discovered a new inspiration: collaging collages.
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