Earth Poems
Suki and Hugh Gallery, Bungendore, 2024
Each painting is a new world where personal feeling and perception merge seamlessly with the external processes of the earth. Impressions of tides, light, and weather intertwine
with the cyclical rhythms of heartbeat and breath, revealing patterns and connections between the ancient flows of the earth and the flows of the human body.
First Born, 96cm x 122cm, oil on linen
Gaian Beats, 96cm x 122cm, oil on linen
Call My Name, 96cm x 122cm, oil on linen
A Million Universes, 102cm x 142cm, oil on linen
The Centre of the World, 102cm x 142cm, oil on linen
Primordial Gods, 142cm x 198cm, oil on linen
Bursting Into Life, 41cm x 51cm, oil on linen
Halcyoninae, 142cm x 198cm, oil on linen
Fairy-Wren Heartbeat, 36cm x 41cm, oil on linen
Lending Histories, 102cm x 142cm, oil on linen
Seize the Day, 102 x 142cm, oil on linen
Currawong Dusk, 41 x 51cm, oil on linen
The works draw from scientific data. Sound recordings converted into spectrograms, inform the equivocal floating orbs and pulsing patterns, depicting the frequency of sounds such as birdsong and lapping water. The paintings in ‘Earth Poems’ are sensory odes to the forces of nature.
FAQs
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The orb was taken from a sound recording of some children playing on the beach. Their voices were carried down the shore on the wind. The broken sound formed little dots on the spectrogram. I have taken just one dot and featured it in a few of the paintings. It derives from the voice of a child but it could also be the moon or the sun.
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Scroll down to the bottom of this page to see a few graphs that I have recorded and you will be able to see the shapes of the sounds in the landscape. The ocean and the wind form are low frequencies and form wide bands across the lower half of the spectrogram. Whereas bird calls and human voices form much more clipped shapes higher in the graph.
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I have used the spectrograms for inspiration only in this body of work. You wouldn't be able to read the painting like a scientific graph. However, the paintings feature the fairy-wren call, a kookaburra laughing, a currawong in the rain, a human heartbeat, water lapping in a lake and children playing.
Currawong + Rain
Kookaburra
Fairy Wren and Waves Crashing