‘Chasm’
Torrential rain, floods, storms, coastal surges, catastrophe, climate change. Living on a Scottish island I’ve really noticed the increased intensity of rainfall. I’ve been thinking a lot about the human relationship to water as a resource and the circular flow between sky, earth and sea. Travelling around the globe between hemispheres, water is everywhere but in many different guises, affecting land and people in so many ways - yet always connected.
Growing up in rural Australia water as a resource was always forefront. When scarce, concerns were of drought, bushfires and livestock, how long until the rain water tanks ran dry, how long would the bore water last.
On one of my trips home to Australia, I flew over the desert on a rare occasion when it was in flood. The colour and landscape was amazing, transformed. From the tiny window of the plane the desert looked like a sea floor. What appeared as ripples and rivulets from above were rivers, wetlands and inland seas. The shift in scale seemed impossible to grasp as the vastness stretched on and the water poured over the land.
Similarly, flying back over the rugged snowcapped Scottish Highlands, from above seem to gently undulate, nestling in to valleys and glens, belying the immense geological forces that formed them, constantly sculpted by water, creeping and shifting. What starts as a trickle can become a chasm, a glacier, an ocean. Taking place over eons of time or created in a moment of catastrophe. Water, violent in both its fury and its absence.
Within this painting the use of dirt from both hemispheres is my way to acknowledge water and its relationship to the land and my place amongst it. As we know, water sustains life and provides an invaluable resource not just to humanity but all ecosystems. Peat from our croft resonated with me as historically it was dried and drained of water and used as a heat source. Now protected and restored it is recognised as an incredible storage for carbon.
When I was last in Australia, I felt compelled to take a small bag of red dirt. I felt deeply guilty doing this as the sand does not feel mine to take, that I am removing it from its birthplace - but at the same time it was calling to me. It was important to me to honour this red dirt in some small way in the making of this painting. Although the red dirt is synonymous with Australia it also represents a vulnerable topsoil blown away by drought, washed away by flood, irrigated and overgrazed, stolen.
I wanted the painting to show the movement of water over the landscape, to see the power and beauty of its force by what it leaves behind.
- the artist