Terra Australis
Terra Australis emerged from the title work, painted for an exhibition about the four elements. After completing it, I visited the Everglades, a delicate ecosystem of tranquil waterways running into Lake Cootharaba, north of Noosa (Sunshine Coast, Queensland). The Everglades supports life where the edges of land and water—salty and sweet, become blurred—a place where the end is the beginning. Terra Australis depicts my ancient floating continent, where an endless horizon divides a vast landscape from an even vaster sky. It captures the devastation of fire, new growth from ashes, the breaking of drought by torrential rain. Adrift at sea, Australia is a landscape of extremes with edges hard and sharp, and a landscape of dreams where edges merge. The title of each work is a phrase from one of my favourite Australian poems.
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