Series concept

These paintings represents the tension of a Western artist eye and the European portrayal of the Australian landscape.
The title ‘Lucus’ means "one-eyed person" in latin. The monochromatic oil painting of a Eucalyptus forest is overlaid with an coloured acrylic sheet , a barrier between us and nature.The monochromatic painting of a Eucalyptus forest is overlaid with a coloured acrylic sheet representing the barrier between the artist and the visual truth of the landscape. The laser cut hole in the foreground of the coloured sheet represents both the artist's limited gaze and understanding. Thus it becomes a metaphor of society’s relationship to climate change data, “looking but not seeing”.
I try to resist the urge to constrain the environment around me and force it into a separate foreground, middleground, and background. It is the metaphoric and literal opacity of a Eucalyptus forest that challenges the European perspectival illusion.

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