Vignette – a flame in the wind of death, 2020

Watercolour & graphite, 18.5 cm x 12.5 cm, framed in raw timber box frame with soft gold face 43.5 cm x 38.5 cm.

I picked up this piece of lichen from near an old shed during the 2019/20 fires.  The small branch onto which the lichen clung was from a pine tree.  It was a very old tree and the branches were covered in lichen, some of which had been scorched by flames.  I put the small branch into the fire truck to bring home to paint.  The tree would have so many stories to tell if it could talk – stories of people, animals, events.  The raging fires along the east coast of Australia, however, killed this old, old, tree and with it, the lichen that had lived in harmony there for generations. 

The title for this work comes from the poem "Fire" by well known Australian poet, Dorothea Mackellar.