I often make work that evolves from long walks. During the walks I participate in a kind of heightened perception as a guide to finding material for my work. I derive images from flora, fauna, geologic or architectural structure, and collect fragments from industrial production, shore detritus, nests, plants and earth pigments. My drawings share with my sculpture an involvement in the natural world. I am interested in the relationship between nature and culture; a relationship that includes the earth, the body as a sensing being, language and the artist’s potential to construct meaning through a process of participating with and within these systems.I find myself walking around looking at residue, flotsam and jetsam, and into the earth’s surface. I peer into excavations in city streets, into newly dug foundations, creek beds, footpath surfaces and road cuts to see what’s revealed. I find beautiful colors—reds, browns, yellow ochres, and celadon greens. Materials combine with memory as I make visual notations of my travels across the landscape. Artwork and thinking about perception and pace, about what, how and how well we see as we construct our lives, seems critical to me.
