Arkaroola just continues to delight the senses!

Having just returned from my fourth trip to Arkaroola over 2 years, I am still delighted and inpired by that arid and ancient landscape. The sheer size of the outback continues to astound and overwhelm as it silently stands witness to all we do.

Paintings cannot express the feelings that collide within one's soul as the eyes get reddened and lined with tiredness at trying to take it all in. I realised this time just how many people travel through that country and come home feeling overwhelmed.

Flashes of ochre walls this time in unexpected places were found as now, this time, I am finally able to start to get down to the details. Found, three more ochre wall sites to explore for next time!

The wall glows under the gums, a hidden site, not much visited and not well known, and darned difficult to paint with any conviction. People cannot imagine that this exists but there it is.... it's quiet ethereal presence from over 500 million years ago - a testament to how beautiful the earth must have been at one time.

These colours would have made up the landscape long before they all became melded into one dull brown or grey. They would have shone on beaches and riverbeds, the sides of hills and mountains - a veritable Garden of Eden.

Now, all we have left in the landscape are a few wild arid places, wilderness areas and sanctuaries, looked over by daring and courageous guardians like the Spriggs of Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary. These are indeed sacred places but will we be strong enough and vigilant enough to protect them from the voracious appetites of a consumer culture. I certainly hope so.

Have we lost our way on this planet?

We have but one home - it's called earth..... and it's an important place because even if we could find a way off, other planets are hardly welcoming.... we still haven't found one nearby that would support life and even if it could, it would taken many generations to build the home we have here.... or did have here.... before we started to pollute and rape the earth.

2012 is surely the year for a wake up call... as we plunder the limited supply of oils, coal, minerals and metals, convert them into rubbish which we then bury back into the ground or worse, throw out to sea, maybe this year we could all take a look at our own consumption and start to think how we might be part of the solution. For me, I have cut down to a pretty simple lifestyle and this year, I am determined to not buy anything I don't absolutely need and to mend things rather than throw away.

My paintings have traditionally been inspired by our beautiful Mother Earth, the wonderful landscapes we live and enjoy and I have found great pleasure over my life creating many paintings, each one completely different to the next. The joy of being able to express myself through art has never left me.

In these later years though, I have found myself wanting to express my concern for the earth and what we are doing to it seemingly with little regard for the future of the generations of human beings to come. Here in Australia, our laws unfortunately were set in place by colonial attitudes to allow the rape and pillage of the landscape by the early settlers and those same laws also now allow us to mine the landscape to its detriment...... most people don't have the time "to give a damn!" esconsced as they are in a cheap luxury lifestyle and kept busy by an aquisitive culture that has made 'money' god.

Today I worked on a painting entitled "LAND / SCARRED" (above) which features the pindan soils of the top end of Western Australia - those luscious reds and purples of iron ore, those sensuous curving hills and there right in the middle I find myself painting a mine site..... it isn't any particular mine site, just one that I designed from the lay of the land on the canvas..... worked up from a number of mine sites that I have seen from the air in my travels. Please feel free to download it and save it as a desktop image if you would like. I doubt if it will ever sell but if I can raise some comment, an eyebrow or make someone out there think, then I have achieved much.

Stop by again soon....