STILL HERE

Sold one of my favourite paintings this week. 'Still Here' 2024. I painted it at Lake Mungo on a trip with water colourist Phillip Edwards, an ancient lakebed that slowly moves east, and as the sand shifts time reveals itself. Ten thousand years. Twenty. Forty. New things showing up inside old things, which is the only reason to go.

You don't get fast answers out there. You sit. You wait. You listen. You also see the scars, the attempts to make that country into a wheat crop or a grazing paddock or a timber lot, the madness of thinking any of it would hold. The land doesn't care. It says no matter what you do, I'm still here.

What I've been sitting with as i prepare to head north is the ridgeline, because the gutters either side are easier to stay in but they only give you one horizon. The ridgeline is thinner. Harder to hold. From there you see every horizon at once.

The body knows this before the brain does.

In yoga, one foot down, you fix on a point or you fall. On a motorcycle you look through the corner. On a horse you look past the jump. Not where you are. Where you're going. Lose the focus and you crash.

Next week I'm off to the desert. Broken Hill. Motorcycle, sketchbook, ink. Sleep under the stars. Espressos at the fire. Be still. Wait. See.

New show coming. 'Broken Gold'.