Abstracts & Impressions

When my mind ceases to think of outcomes 
I enter a state-of-play, a special place inside where true joy resides.  – Steve Parish

This collection focuses on abstractions, montages, collages, and playful impressions of a wide range of content. While the many genres have a definite place, inside my head, there is a little boy who loves his wide-ranging palette and simply loves to play—nothing more and nothing less.

This collection focuses on the visual language of shape, form, colour, and line, creating compositions that can exist independently from the ‘real’ world. In the realm of photography, I’ve pushed the boundaries of enhancement, transforming some images radically in terms of colour, texture, and form, while others stand as abstract works in their own right.

The collection represents both interpretations of field experiences and subsequent playful rendering via digital manipulation of those field encounters. The content in this portfolio originates from wetlands, arid lands, woodlands, forests, oceans, and reefs, as well as collected imagery over time across every corner of the Australian continent on land, from the air, and beneath the sea.

Above: ‘Karlu Karlu’.  Karlu Karlu / Devils Marbles Conservation Reserve, Northern Territory. This image is about both geological form and fantasy for me, and the tension between the two has produced this outcome. 

Reawkening

To witness the reawakening of previously dry, dusty, seemingly barren landscapes never ceases to be a thrilling experience. Southwest Queensland

‘The Isness’

The acceptance of ‘what is’, the quality of being, also became a revelation to me quite recently. It is very pertinent to photography because considerable anxiety can arise if the photographic conditions – weather, light, finding the subjects you seek’, are not immediately forthcoming.  Over the years, I have learnt to accept what is in any given moment; this applies very much to wildflower photography fieldwork.  So I have a choice. I can choose to become anxious, upset, filled with mind stories, or just accept the isness and discover many more exciting photography subjects.  This image was on one field trip ‘out of season’, so I thought what a surprise to find the recent rains had generated a spectacular new blooming of colour.
Stirling Ranges National Park, Western Australia

‘Noongar Country I, II & III’

Colour is without doubt my most important ingredient as a photographer of the natural world. In fact, as a young underwater photographer, it was the intense colour found in marine life that fuelled my drive to document, then share, the images with anyone who would look. Flowering plants have presented me with similar joyful moments. The image of wildflowers are a celebration of that journey, a journey into one of the world’s most diverse and colourful kingdoms, the flowering plants of Australia.
All three images above,  Wildflower carpeting, Morawa Shire, central Western Australia.

‘Shifting Goalposts’

This image and the back-story to follow, came to me while contemplating the shimmering reflections close to the Pieman Rivers’ bank in western Tasmania. Closer to the rivers edge the lines were most disrupted, the further out the shimmering deceased. At the time I thought, wow, that’s how it is in life. Life’s dramas, always subside. Small and even monumental changes to our life situation can come charging out of a clear blue sky at a moment’s notice as if some dominant force reached down and moved your goalposts without warning!

‘Alpine Inspiration’

Snow gum tree bark ranges in colour and young branches are glossy and red and as the tree matures, it develops smooth bark ranging in colour from green to grey and cream. This abstract reflects those colours.

‘Special Schools’

Beneath the eucalyptus trees
down among the fallen leaves
and branches,
a silent, shuffling shape
goes searching,
leaving telltale traces
only for those with time
and lots of patience,
who have been to special schools
to learn to see.

When in forests and woodlands, I must remember to look down at my feet!

‘Kati Thanda I & II’

As a photographer, I am often torn between realism and abstraction. Thirty hours airborne from William Creek during the 2010 floods represents the highlight of my entire career photographing Australia from above and below. The collages of shape, shadow, colour and texture while looking vertically from 10,000 feet reinforced my love affair with the art of land. I was so excited that the tears flowed freely, so much so, I was focussing blind!

Water seeps from Warburton Creek into Lake Eyre, Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre National Park, South Australia

‘Yandruwandha Country I’

Yandruwandha 1 was inspired while flying across the multiple ecosystems found in Malkumba-Coongie Lakes National Park, a spectacular wild place in far northeastern South Australia. The flight was late afternoon, and the country was in flood. The dunes and grasslands, when combined with sky reflections across mirror-calm waters, provided a colour palette beyond anything I have ever witnessed.

As One

Like a giant maze spilling across the landscape, a myriad of minor creeks find their way to the lowest point where they become ‘as one’ — an excellent metaphor for what has now become the river of consciousness. People begin a movement independently, which then forms one influential collective. In this case, the many tributaries combine as Warburton Creek, which then takes a 400-kilometre journey culminating in the flooding of Lake Eyre. The change the water brings to this arid landscape is one of the most stunning natural events I have ever witnessed.

Flooded and blooming landscape north-eastern South Australia

‘The Art of Land I & II’

When viewed from above, the artistry of this landscape lies in the incredibly detailed patterns of what are, in effect, small flat rocks that make up a  tiled, pavement-like canvas as far as the eye can see.  Know as gibber desert it is home to one of the world’s most deadly snakes, the inland taipan (Oxyuranus microlepidotus)

‘Vulkathunha I & II’

Vulkathunha–Gammon Ranges National Park (which includes Lake Frome Regional Reserve) is a collection of unique habitats ranging from deep, tree-lined gorges to ancient mountain slopes and peaks, from open mulga woodland to major salt lake ecosystems such as Lake Frome.  Like so much of Australia, the geological textures have provided this artist with decades of pleasure.

‘Tenacity’

This tough, wind-blown little tea-tree was growing almost horizontally to the ground. It had sent its roots on what one could only describe as a horizontal journey for survival. What a great metaphor for life’s journey, reminding us that whilst we humans crave certainty, true certainty doesn’t really exist. It is an illusion. Only a willingness to embrace change, a conscious effort to remain open to life’s challenges, enables a moderate chance of survival.  In 2019 the Kangaroo island wildfires burnt the entire region, however, the good news is the wind-swept tea trees are returning.  I could think of no better nature metaphor for the challenges we humans face throughout our lives.  You can lose everything you own, however you cannot lose who you are.

‘Tenacity’ – Tea-tree Kangaroo Island.  

‘My Beating Heart’

The artful contortions of fig tree roots wrapping around a sandstone boulder inspired me to think of my beating heart. King George River region coastal Kimberley Western Australia.  Having recently in 2020 had both a triple bipass and a main heart value replacement it is even more relevant!

‘Another Stairway’

Days after making this image, the entire region burst into flames with one of the  eastern Tasmania’s worst bushfires in history. Locals experienced great loss and subsequent emotional strain. Having experienced loss myself, and working on the philosophy expressed in an Eckhardt Tolle quotation, ’You can lose something you have, but never something you are’, I picked myself up and, with the blessings attached to my CLP and my connection with nature, was able to engage with life once more with renewed vigour. 

Initially, I found the monumental changes in my life intimidating. As a result of the many ‘poor little me’ mind stories I repeated to myself, I wound up with massive, life-threatening anxiety attacks. Over the years that followed, I rediscovered myself through digital art. In doing so, I realised once more that there is always another stairway (or pathway) leading to yet another episode in the amazing adventure of life.

‘Tarkine Tideline’

Sand between toes, warm breeze on bare skin, the smell of salty air, sea-sounds that surround and all the while a downward search for artistry. Wandering the tideline with an artist’s eye is sure to take one’s mind far away from the past and the future to the joy of this moment.

‘Networking’

Humans have been networking to benefit the collective for eons, corals have been doing it for much, much longer. Working with this animal group makes my heart sing. 

‘Bluestone Bay’

Each time I visit Tasmania’s Freycinet National Park, I schedule a morning start for Bluestone Bay.

‘Planet Butterfly & Planet Angelfish’