EARTH BONES - artist's statement.
Growing up in Hastings, in daily sight of Te Mata Peak, and frequent associations with the cliffs at Cape Kidnappers and their angled layers, are early memories of my interest with the earth and its rocks.
Since moving initially to Mapua in 2002 and then creating my studio in Mahana, I have discovered my ancestors' (the Roil family) rough hewn headstones from the 1870s in the Richmond Pioneer Cemetary and that they came from near the Salisbury Plain, an area with many prehistoric stone features, that I understood my genetic affinity with stone.
Thus, experiencing the Takaka Hill's exposed thrusted, weathered rock forms, was an exciting opportunity to explore this fascination further - and this "Earth Bones' series of paintings
The bold forms are heavily textured oil over multi media to capture the rough, primal nature of the area.
In the 'pop art' tradition, the fleeting image is stilled, so that we can contemplate it, and its associations, at our leisure. As in an adapted quote "Great art prompts one to think of a great deal more than what is being represented", so I hope these works will have a similar effect on viewers.
And check out the two poems on stone.
31 May - 19 June
