Oil on canvas, stretched and ready to hang.

Signed on the front.

My landscape painting has long been concerned with the environmental impact of human activity on wilderness. I often focus on humankind’s polarised relationship with the environment created by an inherent fear of the vast uncontrolled wilderness. I juxtapose this against the destructive power of human “management” of the environment.
As someone living in a town inside a national park I constantly witness traces of human presence being [seemingly] indelibly scratched into the surface of the earth by significant marks left by machinery, development and vehicles in the same way an artist leaves daubs of paint upon the surface of a canvas.
Having once been lost in a Queensland National Park I became aware that one often feels a foreboding about the isolation within a national park wilderness. I have sought to elicit a sense of danger or menace that often accompanies this but also the sadness about the continual exploitation and damage to the fringes of wilderness.
“From a Dark Place” is an ironic reflection about how our marks upon the ancient earth will erode with time despite significant human impact. Shortlisted Finalist, Scope Environmental Art Prize 2014.