2006–2018 — The Landscape Within

After my exhibition Moving On in 2005, I left polyester casting resin behind. I had spent years building moulds, pouring layer after layer and working with the physicality of resin, but I was ready for something more fluid. The three-dimensional element remained important, but I no longer needed to construct the landscape itself. I began building paintings through layers of mixed media, using acrylics, oils, cement, textured materials, artificial plants and found elements such as stones, sticks and earth. The landscapes were still recognisable, desertscapes, seascapes, icescapes, mountains and natural forces, but I was beginning to explore what could be expressed through movement, atmosphere, colour and texture rather than through physical form.

My relationship with nature continued to deepen. In my exhibition Polarities of Nature in 2006, I explored the beauty and destructive forces of the natural world, from wind, light, rain and movement to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, flooding and tsunamis. Nature could be both beautiful and powerful, peaceful and destructive, and I found myself increasingly drawn to these opposing forces. The landscape became more than something I observed. It became a way of exploring the emotional experience of being alive.

During these years, my own life was moving through significant change. I moved between different landscapes in New Zealand, from Peria Valley in Northland back to Auckland, and later from Auckland to Darwin. Alongside this, I spent six years working at Corban Estate Arts Centre, surrounded by artists, exhibitions and creative practice every day. Being in that environment felt deeply natural to me and gave me a place where art was not separate from everyday life. I also continued exploring spirituality and ideas around unseen energies, while beginning to look more deeply at my own inner world.

By 2009, the landscape was increasingly becoming a reflection of something internal. In Search of Paradise was a large, dark three-dimensional work made from cement. I imagined stalactites descending from a cave ceiling while formations rose from the ground, with only the faintest light filtering down from above. I saw myself searching through the darkness for some small glimpse of happiness and peace, a kind of paradise. The work was still a landscape, but it was also a state of mind.

Around 2012, something began to shift more consciously in my work. I was moving away from the heavy physicality of mountains and constructed forms and towards a more fluid exploration of what might exist behind the visible surface of life. The Unseen became a significant work within this transition. I no longer needed to represent a mountain, a river or another physical thing for the painting to carry the feeling of it. Oil, acrylic and varnish allowed movement, colour, texture and flow to suggest something that could not necessarily be seen. In The Fire, the forms seemed to create themselves as I worked. I poured the colours and allowed the fire and smoke to emerge, and it felt increasingly like a collaboration with the materials. I did my part, and then allowed the materials their part, responding to what they created rather than trying to completely control the outcome.

By 2014, I was living in Darwin, Australia, and the work continued to move into darker and more psychological territory. In Into the Shadows, a powerful bird moves through a desolate landscape as layers of darkness wash across the scene. Beauty, strength, danger and unpredictability exist together within the image. Looking back, I can see that the physical landscapes I had been painting were increasingly becoming metaphors for an inner landscape. I was moving from depicting what I could see towards exploring what I could feel, sense and intuit, even when I could not yet fully understand it.

The years from 2006 to 2018 became a gradual movement towards the landscape within. Nature remained my constant language, but I was becoming less interested in simply representing the world around me and more interested in what might exist beneath it. The landscape was becoming a doorway into something less tangible, something internal and unseen. This was the beginning of a shift that would eventually lead me further away from literal representation and towards the more abstract language of my later work.