Two Stoic Gums Drawing

I was born in Sydney, Australia and now live in northern New South Wales, looking directly onto the majestic Clarence River at Seelands just south west of Grafton. From all our living areas, the great river meanders past. The river is a pivotal element in my artwork. The artworks that I produce puzzle over ideas on identity and transformation through paradox. The more we domesticate ourselves and our environment, the more we search to find connection to the ‘wild’ in us and in nature. I make a plucky heroine out of collage who is situated within the rich, lush riverscapes of northern NSW. Her challenges involve our contradictory relationships and human frailties, and her quest is to find her voice, knowledge and connection to the Australian environment. A miss directed hunt for a public toilet in the Louvre, threw me unexpectedly into the arms of artist Arcimboldo.  In a hidden corridor, I was enchanted by his series of beautiful little pictures of faces made up of flowers.  The experience of his work sparked the idea of putting together seemingly unrelated visuals to create something new.  The artist Hannah Höch and the way she collaged female characters, gave me the method to create my central character from collage.  Max Ernst’s book ‘Semaine de Bonte: A Surrealistic Novel in Collage’, used collage and trashy love stories for visual storytelling, an inspiration that I channeled into my own stories of a heroine situated within lush riverscapes. Inspired by elements of story telling and surrealism and an understanding that this is how I think in terms of juxtaposition and combination- I incorporate classic hand drawing and collage, with digital media as photography and recently animation.