Dressed in Pines
- Landscape
- Archival reproduction print on A4 Canson Rag Photographique 210g/m2 Fina Art paper.
- 29.7 x 21 cms (11.69 x 8.27 ins)
- Ref: 733249
$ 45.00
I like to explore a different way of seeing landscape that includes understanding its story, and I sometimes use raw materials made into pigments from the landscape itself. Gold mining in Ballarat during the 1850s–1870s sliced and sluiced out the hillside, leaving sandstone cliffs. Destructive as this was, iron oxidation turned the rock a beautiful pink-red, and it is used as a beautiful pigment in the original painting.
It interests me to view apparently placid landscapes that have undergone dynamic change. Gold was found in Black Hill (Bowdun), Ballarat in 1845, and for years afterward the place was fiercely plundered until all signs of life were stripped away and the hill itself was ground down. Later on, raw and bare, it was dressed in new trees by children and adults from the city. This artwork is inspired by one of its rock gullies, natural or not, where nature is still attempting regeneration.