From my studio in Canberra, Australia I work to create ethereal abstract nature paintings that echo that feeling of ease and wellness that twinkles through you when you stop in a pocket of forest or under a tree.

In the tangle of the forest understorey, the connectivity of all things is most apparent to me. The sense of oneness and gentle alive-ness leads me to create layers of subtle, organic marks that invite the viewer in, like we lean in to listen when someone speaks softly. Paint is added or removed, responding to the moment; some things from life, some imagined, as though co-creating, until this pocket of wilderness is formed enough to hold us. Final flecks of colour are allowed to skip across the surface like sunlight on leaf, web or tiny wing.

I’m exploring the concept of Nature as divinity, accessed by grounding in the wild-grown Earth that is the ancestral home for our species. The result, I hope, is artwork with a sense of the ethereal; that is somehow both divine-uplift and soft-landing – like opening the door to home. 

Formerly known as Victoria (Vicki) Collins.