The entanglement of storm, fire, flood, chaos, grief and hope 2016
150cm x  279cm

Earth pigments (Mount Dandenong), charcoal (Montrose), oil pastel frottage, watercolour, gouache and acrylic on Japanese Kozo (mulberry) paper

 

Emerging from local landscapes scarred by fire, flood and storm, this work records the chaos of recurring natural disasters: longer and more intense fire seasons; mass fish kills; record floods; and 60m trees falling like toothpicks. Natural materials on Wurundjeri Country — paint made from root balls twice the size of me and charcoal from the fire ground — carry the residue of what remains. 

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Japanese Kozo paper, seemingly delicate but remarkably strong, is thin enough to make detailed tracings in gold oil pastel of the chainsaw marks on a tree near my home, one of 25,000 that fell in the Dandenong Ranges in the 2021 storm. I find the dying leaves that drip like golden jewellery oddly beautiful.

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Broken branches with flourishes of new growth are entwined with a carpet of silver fish, a grid of seedlings grown for regeneration, and white daisies which flower profusely every year, defiant and hopeful.

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Currently entered into the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery Works on Paper prize