The Frederick

This painting emerged from the awe of seeing a ship and an island held in the glow of a setting sun. Human hands shaped one, while the other is formed slowly through deep time. The Frederick exists between reality and myth: a ship that never was, yet a symbol of escape and reinvention, its scale echoing the great vessels that now arrive on Tasmania’s shores. Tasmania is defined as much by its stories as by its terrain — at once refuge and frontier — with layers of narrative and geology embedded beneath its surface. The Frederick suggests that islands, and the stories we tell about them, are living things: continually evolving and always afloat.