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After the Big Wet, 40cm x 90cm, acrylic on board, 2021

I can’t drive through rural countryside where these bales of cotton or hay with their brightly coloured plastic wrapping sit in fields and not be struck by their incongruity. They remind me of the wrapped headlands, buildings and other conceptual artforms of Christo and Jean- Claude. They add a strange alien beauty with their strong synthetic colours set in the less chromatic tertiary colours of nature. I’ve always been interested in the clash of man made forms with natures forms and, as time and the elements take their toll, their eventual breakdown and reconciliation.

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Mehi Band of Gold, 40cm x 90cm, acrylic on board, 2021

After the Painted River Project event at Moree where I was an invited artist I returned a few months later to take more photographs as composite studies for some studio paintings. I arrived late in the day after heavy rain. The Mehi River had been in a huge flood just days before and the Sun broke through under heavy clouds just before sunset. The cast shadows of buildings and clouds left a thin strip of Golden Light across the tree trunks.