SOUTH

South is a series of paintings created during a residency on the South Island of New Zealand.

 

Travelling from Australia to work directly within a landscape that was both unfamiliar and immediately commanding, my intent was to develop a body of work over a three-week period for presentation at the Aotearoa Art Fair. 

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The thinking and preparation began months in advance, and the enormity of the project in terms of pressure to deliver and expectations added weight and urgency in the lead-up. To arrive at place without expectations, I needed to free myself of preconceptions to be open to an honest, immediate reaction to this new environment. 

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For me, the project represents a privileged moment of cross-Tasman exchange: an Australian painter responding in situ to the physical and elemental conditions of Aotearoa.

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Working plein air, I embedded myself within the terrain rather than observing it from a distance. Rivers, mountains, open plains and beechwood forests formed a shifting field of influence. The cool air, strong wind, and sleeting rain were not incidental; they shaped both the process and the outcome.

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Rather than attempting to represent the sublimity before me, I allowed the awareness and sensations of place — temperature, movement, sound and the pulsating sense of awe — to guide my involuntary response.

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With my practice centred on action within the landscape, these canvases operate as physical records of their making. During the making of the South series, I gathered natural debris from the immediate environment: earth, locally made charcoal, grasses, and water drawn from nearby rivers and streams. These materials were blown across, embedded into, and dispersed through the painted surface. They remain visible within the finished works as evidence — traces of time, weather and site. In this way, the paintings are not representations of landscape so much as collaborations with it.

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Working at scale intensifies this relationship. The body moves in response to the conditions; balance shifts; gestures adjust. I work intuitively and without rigid preconception, yet remain attentive to the forces acting around me. The environment is not a backdrop but an active participant. Marks emerge through negotiation — between intention and interruption, control and contingency.

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Creating these works on New Zealand soil, for a New Zealand audience, has cemented my longing to create paintings that are a collaboration with and a homage to place. The South series continue my investigation into how painting can register place not as image alone, but as a lived encounter — an abstracted yet direct response to presence within the landscape.

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I would like to acknowledge the tangata whenua of this area, Kāi Tahu, and their relationship with the land and waterways of Tāhuna and the Otago region.