GARDEN
Following our successful exhibition 5WAYS, from January 2016, Linda, Lily, Lyn and myself have been working towards our next exhibition, GARDEN which will open on July 7th, 2018.
Having purchased The Rusty Roo in 2000, we immediately started establishing a garden. With the help of family and friends, almost eighteen years on, it is now a delightful haven.
So, blessed with a garden, I now needed to focus.
Investigating the topic I came across a study conducted by Mike Stevens at the University for NSW entitled the Congruent Garden: an investigation into the role of the domestic garden in satisfying fundamental human need.
We have a plethora of flowers, plants and we have bees. Yah!
We also have an abundance of wild-life visitors.
This study establishes that gardens satisfy nine human needs: freedom, identity, creation, understanding, Participation, Leisure, Affection, Protection and subsistence.
Armed with this idea I started investigation what each of those needs means to me, and how I would go about representing them.
Keeping a diary, taking numerous photographs, I started with drawing and then completed some paintings. I wanted to portray the fact that we are all interdependent ... we each need clean air, fresh water, unsullied soil and a ratio of sunshine . . . and that we all need gardens.
However, no matter how much I thoroughly enjoy painting, I soon realized that this did not offer me the ability to truly demonstrate the otherworldliness of a garden. 
The unseen happenings and the fleeting atmospheric changes. I needed a way to show the hidden and the mysterious - to hint at the myriad of occurrences which make a garden interesting. 
I knew I needed to show the grace and beauty of this place in which we find solace.
Armed with this desire I started hunting for a new technique.