'Personal Landscapes', Art and Life series Print

. 'Personal Landscapes' group exhibition 2009 Brecon Theatre Foyer, Powys, Wales. Ceramics and photography as installation. Fired clay, with slips and oxides Digital photography and print, reproduced from old black & white paper photos (all displayed in a glass cabinet) As artists our lives are spent traversing emotional and imaginitive 'terrain', bringing it into the physical world of matter expressed in the form of ceramics, paintings, sculpture, photos, and more. We cross from inner to outer, unconscious to conscious, underworld to upper world, meet 'deaths' and life. It can sometimes be difficult to keep tabs on which is which 'world' as we move backwards and forwards. 'Personal Landscapes' explores ideas about displacement, belonging, and 'home'. These words may suggest a physical, locational reality, but can equally be about one's inner sense of 'home'. For some, there may be a (lifelong) dominating 'search' for how and where to physically live involving choice of house, consideration of local amenities, location, country. Sometimes the related emotional, sensory and broadly spiritual, is overlooked, lost, or unknown to the search. Sometimes we must look to our 'inner' creativity for some of the physical 'outer' expression. Sometimes what we imagine of a place may not hold true when re/experienced 'on the ground'. It may turn out that what we hold within our memories, experiences, feelings, as 'reality', is in fact an inner but not outer reality. Time passes in both the inner and outside worlds. The here and now has to be met anew. “Tell me one last thing," said Harry. "Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?" "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” (Dumbledore) J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Lived origins in two or more diverse parts of the world, can be difficult to reconcile and embrace. At the time of making 'personal landscapes', I was responding to the Australian idea of 'Spirit of Place', and my own powerfully held internal images, past sensory experiences, and something deep in my 'DNA' of the 'landscape'. I thought about everything I associated with that country; the sight and touch of iconic corrugated metal rainwater tanks, the red iron coloured earth, the intense clear light, the harsh sun, the deep shadows, hot breezes, ants on burning hot pavements, flyscreen-wire on doors and windows, the sounds of birds, human speech, and the outdoors that are so different, the smells of hot dry foliage, white beach sand and salt, and the indefinable sense of being part of something safe, loving and enduring encapsulated by grandparents, family and heritage, that had seemingly always been there. Perhaps this is fondness of hindsight, times past, and imagination, but none-the-less powerfully held. The reproduction of old photos onto art papers, captured for me a fleeting moment of connection with the visual, sounds, smell, touch or experience in the black and white photo; conscious reconnection and acknowledgement into the present of a 'lost' and displaced part of myself. The tree trunks were my attempt to say something about and re-experience the very visual uniqueness of the Eucalyptus or gum trees, the peeling and mottling of the barks, the light and shadow on the trunks, the colours, their straggling lopsided nature, their stature and rooted growth. The raw fired clays, corrugated and imprinted, expressed my need to work directly with physical earth. The corrugated clay speaks about this strange man-made material, corrugated sheet metal, which has entered the collective psyche of the country. It used to be a cheap functional rural building material; now it is stands for so much more about the way of life, heritage, and down-to-earth attitude. I photographed some torn and bent rusty corrugated metal sheet, washed up on a beach, and this work here, partly began life from those photos. Red dirt roads way out in rural areas, develop rutted corrugations, and ancient red iron rock strata of the NW gorges are also somewhere in the feel for me of these pieces. The third part of the work is to do with some combination of ever present flyscreen doors and the prevalent dated pattern for the metal door structure, snake skin scales, and the Aboriginal myth of the Rainbow Serpent of the creation stories. All the fired clay pieces, had scrolled and hidden in their recesses, various photos of me and my family when I was a child. At that age I must have 'absorbed' all the ‘look‘, sounds, smells, and feel of the trees, the light and shade, the detail of the house, the hot ground, the prickly grass, all so normal, all so ‘of that place’. This work expresses my 'personal landscape' of Australia that I can hold within me. This is a photographic print of my original work. I am revisiting selected work to reconsider its original expression and meaning then and now. .

Print:Giclee on Photo Paper

Size:8 W x 10 H x 0.1 D in

Size with Frame:13.25 W x 15.25 H x 1.2 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.