Earth Call 

These paintings are a culmination of my fascination with the properties of water, philosophical ideas about water, scientific discoveries about our deep oceans and our response to environmental challenges.

The concepts and ideas behind this body of work had its genesis after I read “Landscape and Western Art”.  The author Malcolm Andrews puts forward the idea that landscape art which we think of in our culture to be an appreciation of nature, actually developed out of our own disconnection with nature. That is as man became gentrified, he yearned for the connection he had lost.

The very notion of ‘landscape’ is a human construct. It frames and dissects nature that has no limits. We are now outside nature. As outsiders our disconnection with nature has led to the exploitation of our natural environment.

I felt compelled in my practise to create a path towards nature, to return to the “inside”, to give nature a voice. This body of work reflects on our interaction with our environment, to comment on the effect we are having.

I’m interested in how we “treasure” our environment. It is ironic how an act of appreciation for the environment can affect it adversely. For example visiting a marine park to see trained dolphins perform.

We gather souvenirs of these experiences or special places that help us form our identity. The scale in which we take from the environment and the motivation behind it is where the act of gathering becomes a commercial endeavour. The oceans like the land are full of useful resources but the ocean is also the end of the road for our pollution. The irony of what we treasure and what we take is a central theme in these paintings.

Some of these works employ concepts used in ikebana and consider scale and the representation of a larger landscape in miniature form.  This symbolises that what we do on a small scale affects the greater whole. Other works include mythology and how the ocean is represented as a guiding force in the environment.

Paritutu's lament
1200mm x 1020mm
Oil on canvas
2009
Private Collection

Innerspace
1200mm x 1020mm
Oil on canvas
2009
Private Collection

Exhale
1200mm x 1020mm
Oil on canvas
2009
Private Collection