When words fail me, being in the studio helps me make sense of the world.
This new body of work emerges from several years of attending more deeply to the life of the trees that surround and companion me every day. For many years, I have walked routinely along a path that follows a local creek, appreciating how the trees continue to hold space for me. Even as the weather changes and shapes them, we both endure. But in late 2021, I watched my neighbour excavating the land nearby and, by doing so, undermining the existence of a healthy gum tree. As the roots of this tree were laid bare, I went into the studio to paint the grief that I felt and understand the depth of my response to the inevitable loss of this tree.
It seems that in choosing to live among trees, we live within a nexus of risk and power. In being among the trees surrounding my studio as I make this work, I am becoming more deeply aware of the interdependence that shapes our life with trees. Trees welcome the CO2 that I cannot bear and, in turn, offer me life in the form of oxygen. As I learn to see how trees live interdependently with one another, I see a healthy exchange between risk and power, shaping how I can choose to live with others. I am learning to see trees in the way I see people, and I am wondering what it is like to be a being among trees.
Over the past year or so, I have been working towards developing a new exhibition set to be hung in April 2023.
Being Among Trees will hang in the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre between 3–27 April. Rather than an opening night, I have scheduled an afternoon for a conversation with the artwork and me. Further details are below:
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Art/s and Theology Australia 