Category: Inspiration

Bundanon: Day 3

It was crisp and cold early as I jogged down around the paddocks to the river. A cow sitting near the fence watched me open the gate while further down I encountered the big daddy grey kangaroo again. As we stared at each other and I walked slowly around him in a wide circle he then slowly made his way toward his mob. As I approached the herd of black cattle I wondered at the aesthetically pleasing contrast between their hide and the green grass as I love silhouettes. I thought of a painting with the black cattle looking at me with a large white galah in the foreground. I startled the ducks on the lagoon and the mob of grey kangaroos again. The wombats seem to be in hiding now, their burrows are everywhere.

https://flic.kr/s/aHskb3brGm

Bundanon: Day 2

Another jog up to the amphitheatre and then the ridge startling a rock wallaby. The sun was bursting through the trunks of trees. On the way down I found some ochre dug up by machinery and encountered a big daddy grey kangaroo who stared me down. I waited for him to pass before running back to my studio. I prepared all my images for use in my paintings and began working with delek to finish a work on paper, realising it was now the birth of my son Zephyr Nebachudanezzar on the Shoalhaven River in 1994 when I lived with Adam in a farmhouse across the river from Bundanon. We had hung out the sheet I gave birth to Zephyr on to dry but during the night it was taken away by a mystery creature.

Bundanon: Day 1

The morning of my first day I jogged down the paddock scattering the feeding wombats as black cattle and grey kangaroos stared at the newcomer to their country. But it is familiar country, on the river where I gave birth to my son 20 years ago. Near the town I went to high school. I had been to Bundanon before as a school student, then adult visitor, but today I was living here. The first day of 5 weeks. The apartment and studio are perfect, and I have settled in among other creative peers, feeling at home and grounded, in spite of the extreme winds. I focus on the tree lined horizon and begin to gather images. I drive the long treacherous way into town and buy food and a portable electric stove for melting rabbit skin glue. I return to find a black out and flat batteries in my scales. I need to measure 5g of alum and 50g of glue, the sizing will have to wait.

Pirate and the Wood ducks

Yesterday I took dad to meet Pirate at his house. His front yard was filled with the most precious and diabolical bones, including whale, dolphin and other large sea mammals, other animal parts such as snake skin and green turtle shells and magnificent hunks of wood. Most bones and wood had intricate images of Aboriginal men and women or sacred animals etched or burnt into them. Dad loved meeting Pirate. They are similar, both with one eye and an obsession with animals and the practice of taxidermy in all its forms. Pirate’s practice includes decomposition in order to retrieve bones so we are looking for a suitable place to collaborate. He presented us with gifts. He gave dad a cattle egret and I was given two wood ducks! Sacred to my childhood, dad had given me a baby wood duck I had hand-raised. I took the ducks to a clearing under a tree in Woollamia to decompose. Darren helped me.