2021 Collection

Presence and Place

This body of work was produced in fulfilment of a Creative Arts and Design (Honours) Degree with University of Canberra in 2021. The project was driven by an intrinsic feeling of ‘place’, drawing on memory, immediate experience and a felt sense of past events. Practical work included photography and plèin air drawing re-interpreted in paintings in the studio. Research into the archeological, Indigenous and Settler history of the location and broader studies into differing approaches to Landscape Painting in Western, Zen Buddhist and Aboriginal Art was also undertaken and presented in a Dissertation titled ‘Presence and Place in Landscape Painting’.

The Country chosen for the project lies within the homelands of the Wirrayaraay People from the Gamilaraay Nation in North Western NSW. It is steeped in geological and historical paradigms reaching back into Deep Time. Ochre and rose tinted sandstone outcrops rise randomly from lightly wooded hills enfolding a black basalt valley. A creek winding through the valley provides permanent water. Archeological evidence indicates First Nations people inhabited it for eight millennia prior to white settlement. It is also the adopted Country of my Irish ancestors who arrived in the 1860’s as farmer settlers.