Sydney Harbour’s numerous bays were created 17 thousand years ago, when rising seas filled a deep basin created millions of years before. While the impact of the process that formed that landscape has long gone, the essence of its life, beauty and resilience remain and has motivated this artwork.
This canvas is my imaginary aerial capture of that maelstrom of inundation of what we now call Iron Cove as it formed a timeless estuary of saltmarsh and mangroves. The colours of these wetlands and submerged valley walls under teal tidal flows are my preoccupation. Fleshy hued high rock formations show safe places where flora grows unhindered to this day, and there are human-built middens at the mouth of colonial Long Cove Creek (now Hawthorne Canal, Leichhardt).
This painting will inspire your space with its spectacular prehistoric environment.