In this artwork five dead trees are floating in the sky. It is as if they are being contained by the sky. Could the sky be comforting them? Helping them feel okay about dying? At the end of 2020 and for most of 2021 I would see dead trees wherever I walked or drove. They stood out to me. I would stop and photograph them and Instagram friends started to send photos to me. I would draw them and paint them. It gave me a lot of comfort.
Before the Delta outbreak I was camping in Green Patch Campground at Jervis Bay, NSW. On the way, the dead trees were on hill tops everywhere. It was is if they were floating in the sky. Maybe this painting is also drawing upon memories from my childhood of walking in deep gold rush gullies in the Whipstick Forest, looking up at the black trunks of the Ironbark Trees above. They looked as if they were floating in the sky.
I wonder if this thought brings me comfort at a time of grief, as it did in childhood when I was grieving my parents separation and adjusting to being in a new place both externally and internally.
- Subject Matter: Inner landscape
- Collections: Under One Sky