‘“Landscape is the greatest illusion of all, because there is nothing constant about it. You remember a landscape as if it were a picture. Your memory creates postcard images but doesn’t really comprehend the world at all. […] In a landscape a person sees his own inner, transitory moments.” 1

This work comes from a visit in the winter of 2018 to leeawuleena, Lake St Clair. Sketches and photos from that time were revisited to create this new work.

Lake St Clair is a deep place of mystery for me. A surface that is unreadable. It is never static, particularly in the depths of winter. A constant barrage of wind is tunnelled along its surface, held by imposing snow-capped mountains, bursting against the southern shore. Often it was difficult to stand. Vegetation is moulded by this energy, and large driftwood piles litter the beach.

I’m here and also elsewhere, feeling the echoes of other remote lakes held by old stories.

The cold wax medium provides a layering that allows for a surface that is moving and varied. The heightened colour exaggerates the sense of being there – it is but one moment of reflection in many transitory moments.

1 Olga Tokarczuk from ‘House of Day, House of Night’ (1998)