North Esk River Walks

This work is based on recollections and observations of various sites encountered on walks along the North Esk River. These walks lead to musing on ideas that circulate around the representation of land, country, sites, and views. How this place affects me as well as the impact of my presence are concurrent thoughts. Evidence of the pressure of tourism is ubiquitous. It is inevitable in a place of such vitality and beauty that the depressing stakes involved in the politics of Global Heating spring to mind. North Esk River Walks draws from decorative traditions inspired by the natural environment. Motifs include bird life, fragments of plants and discarded human belongings, yabby casts, and feathers, seemingly suspended in reflected sky on the river. There is no particular order to the composition except insofar as it recalls the constant rearrangement of the physical world by the haphazard processes of natural and human generated events, in this case the action of water movement in a modified tidal estuary and the comings and goings of migratory birds. This random format reflects the role of chance in systems where interrelated components flow together in time and geography.