Vignette – give comfort at least, 2020

Watercolour & graphite, 21 cm x 11.5 cm, framed in raw timber box frame with soft gold face 43.5 cm x 34.5 cm.

I collected this Bunya Pine frond from beneath a tree in Cootamundra.  It was a big old tree with spreading branches;  obviously a place where people stood or sat to talk and smoke and drink in cool comfort at the end of a hot summer’s day or at night.  Spent matches and bottle tops lay in the leaf fronds on the ground around the tree.  These days it is probably a silent place.

The title for this work comes from the poem "Australia’s Men" by well known Australian poet, Dorothea Mackellar.