Vignette – and fire and famine, 2019

Watercolour & graphite, 11.5 cm x 7.5 cm, framed in raw timber box frame with soft gold face 38.5 cm x 33.5 cm.

This is an Australian Yellow Winged Locust which can track its ancestry back millions of years to the Triassic.  In the heat of the Australian summer they are very visible in areas of country NSW, and they make a distinctive clicking sound as they fly, tossed on the hot, dry winds moving across the bleached bones in the paddocks.  They are dancers in splendid costume, dramatic and colourful.  They are considered pests because they ride on the back of drought and fire.  The bones are testament to their stripping of vegetation as they make their way across the country.

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