Artist: Mikaela Castledine

• Highly Commended Collie Art Prize 2020

This work explores the return to places as an adult that were important to you as a child. The Old Beverly Road runs past the farm where I was born and the paddocks, granite outcrops, dams and trees depict the landscape of my childhood. Stitching with your fingers, a landscape that has been known to your eye and your feet is a way of reinforcing deep connections to that land. The painstaking hand stitched recreation of this landscape is a mnemonic, a paean to my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents who farmed in this district, my child self who became estranged from it, and my adult self who looks back with nostalgia.