TREE MAKING
2018 - 2019
Recently I’ve been making prints that obliquely exploit the big-picture challenges presented by our current geopolitical conjunction and the tree has become a new motif in this context. Tree Making is an ongoing series of etchings that were generated from residencies in 2017 in the old country of Lake Mungo in the Willandra Lakes World Heritage region and shortly after in Huashan, the sacred western mountain of the Five Great Mountains of China - famous for its vast granite peaks from which indigenous conifers precariously perch. Interestingly, the trees on these sites offer contradictory themes of intersection and difference, from the universal role trees play in our survival, to how they represent biodiversity through regional distinction. Accumulated Experience aligns these ideas with my interest in the aesthetic and horticultural conventions of bonsai. This etching hints at the potential consequences of global warming while simultaneously providing a memorial to the trees that have perished in the acquisition of my fledgling bonsai skills.
