The Lanscape Is Beyond Me

This body of work began with a journey through Central Australia — where the colours hit you like a wave, and the stories in the land run deep. Being on Arrernte Country, surrounded by an art practice so connected to story, Dreaming, and time as something circular, not linear, helped me shift how I think and feel about landscape. I’ve come to understand that landscape isn’t just what’s “out there”; it’s something we carry inside — shaped by memory, emotion, and experience. Indigenous cultures often see the land as part of them — within and around — while the Western view tends to treat it as something separate, to be used or conquered. Growing up on the land, I lived in that in-between space — full of awe and fear, myth and meaning. The bush was alive with characters, seasons, and symbols that shaped how I saw the world. That’s still in me. Australian art in the 1940s started to shift from romantic visions of conquest to something more uncertain — more modern. I feel that tension still. My paintings come from that space — between beauty and absurdity, between deep connection and not quite knowing. For me, the landscape is a stage, a symbol, and sometimes a wound. It’s where stories unfold, where questions are asked, and where the spirit still lingers — always bigger than the frame.