Station 7

Sacred animate (inversion) #3 (diptych), ink and graphite on paper, 38 x 28.5cm. Photographer: Christophe Canato

My ink and graphite drawings interweave imagery of collected findings from the natural environment with a process-driven ‘stream of consciousness’ technique. Finding inspiration in processes of growth and decay, ecological cycles become metaphors for personal transformation—trauma into beauty, pain into awareness. Considering the concepts of crucifixion and rebirth, I find a connection with my own practice in that all forms of suffering contain a transformative potential for growth.

The sourced imagery and objects in this piece have been found around the bushland and coastline where I regularly walk—places close to my home outside Fremantle like the Coolbellup bushland, and the Beeliar Wetlands. I often take home small findings from my walks which then sit beside me in my studio, and I touch them like I would a precious object. I have watched bulldozers tear through the places I walk, and my collected objects suddenly seem transformed into precious artefacts. Like sacred objects stored in a Church reliquary, these humble things are transformed merely by the significance we apply to them.

For this exhibition, each drawing is mirrored by an inverted impression, like a trace or stain. The abstracted Rorschach-like inkblots (accompanied by their double), allude to an essential paradox—that within every thing is contained its opposite.