Journeys - Artist's Statement
Life is like a box of chocolates... oh, ok so Forrest beat me to it! Well then, life is a journey but not a single journey from birth to death. Life is a myriad of journeys, journeys within journeys within journeys. Some journeys are planned, and we have some control over where they take us and for how long. These are often enjoyable, like a holiday or getting married and having children; although once your children are born all your wonderful planning flies 'out the window'. That brings me to the 'other journeys', the unplanned and sometimes unwanted ones. These can be as simple as a journey to the nearest petrol station because you ran out of petrol 20kms before town. Or they can be as complex as divorce or fighting a deadly illness.
When the Out of The Box artist group decided on 'Journeys' as our theme for the 2007 exhibition, I initially thought I would paint about life and death, well... death mainly. But, as you can probably guess, it all became much too complex for me. So I chose two very simple journeys to explore. During a recent trip to Cape York I became fascinated by the abundance and variety of pods and seeds that were scattered absolutely everywhere. I started to pick them up because they were so beautiful to look at and touch. Then I started to sketch them and then they demanded to be included in the exhibition. So began my first series, Pods & Seeds. They too are on their journey to become a tree or plant. The other series is about waiting at a Bus Stop, albeit a rather unusual bus stop. Can you guess where the bus is going, if it ever comes that is?