Pink Flowers
a recent painting, now off to its new owner
When you venture into a Tasmanian forest you discover an intricacy of fungi, fern, lichen and moss, of strange little spiders, grubs and insects, of creatures avian and amphibious. Pause and watch them living their complicated lives around rocks, rivulets and rotting wood in an intriguing, interconnected wonderland. So much to keep you fascinated!
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| Pink Flowers oil on canvas, 84 cm x 97 cm |
This is one of
many paintings celebrating the intersection between flora and fauna
in which I begin by painting some big, basic shapes to establish a
pictorial scaffold. Then I grow the details over it, like buds
opening on winter branches, green moss cushioning a delicate bone,
the patterns of weathered rocks, networks of lichen lace draped over
naked twigs; all these natural shapes begin to furnish and inhabit
the space. Before long, they take on a life of their own and become a
fantasy landscape, lush in colour, an improbable biology of
anthropomorphic beasts and peripatetic vegetation.
The line
When fishes flew, and forests walked, and figs grew upon thorn . . .
repeated again and again in my head while I painted Pink Flowers and might go some way to explain it. I’m sorry about the unimaginative title, but I did put a bit of creativity into making the picture.
