Beyond Thoughts – Lake Sorell

In Susan Sontag’s essay, The Aesthetics of Silence, she makes reference to an absolute silence: coming to an end of mental activity. This state is both absolutely vacuous and completely full‚ like empty wisdom. In this silence there is an opportunity for thoughts beyond thoughts. I am drawn to remote places in the Tasmanian landscape, which provide this sense of quietness, layered in their own history and stories. There is a unique sense of self-awareness realised in such environments that is difficult to describe that in turn emanates a sense of life and hope within our ever-changing world that balances on a tipping point. Lake Sorell for me is such a place.

Melissa Smith

2019

Oil and ink on paper