An Index of Trees in Walyunga National Park over three days in May 2024 punctuated by thunderstorms, II

"An Index of Trees..." is part of a series of works made on site in Walyunga National Park in May 2024. The works record the properties of the trees of the natural environment; the paper has been dragged and rubbed across the surface of burnt tree branches and wet bark, picking up the tannins of leaves soaked in the downpours of thunderstorms. The soil from which these trees have grown has been rubbed and fixed to the surface, and I have drawn the birds observed visiting and inhabiting these places.

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I am an artist based in Perth/Boorloo, Western Australia, working in a site-responsive landscape practice that explores the intersection of site, land, place and people within a post-Colonial Australian imaginary. In 2022 I completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Curtin University, and an Honours (First Class) in 2024.

Throughout this time I have developed a methodology for an alternative landscape painting rooted in embedded making and indexical mark making techniques. Embedded making entails spending extended periods of time within the environment, making work within the land itself through observational drawing, impressionistic watercolour painting and journalistic reflection. Indexical mark making is a way of working that seeks to include nature and land as an active participant in the production of the artwork by allowing nature to create its own marks on the paper by using found ochres, nature printing, or dragging large pieces of paper through the environment, along the dirt ground or against burnt trees and mallees. In doing so, the work records movement through and within the land, capturing the collaborative interactions between nature and myself as an artist, and allowing the unique physical character of the landscape to express itself through the artwork.