Tall Stories: Paintings from Cuttagee

Frame & Brush
4/28 Lamont Street, Bermagui NSW

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These paintings were produced during a recent residency at Cuttagee, not far from where I live in Bermagui but a world away, where I was immersed in the place and my practice. The Gang Gang Studio is situated on the traditional lands of the Diringanj people of the Yuin Nation, who lived in harmony with the land for thousands of years. The surrounding spotted gum forest was last month miraculously spared in the encircling October 3rd bushfire. The ocean soars constant in the air, the old wooden bridge, recently withstanding a push to replace it with a concrete freight path, rumbles gently like a slow beat.

Under the canopy, freckled with bird song and wild flowers, the lagoon and mother mountain peep through the trees and remind me of moments sitting beneath that bridge. It’s a place I have returned to serendipitously over the years, appearing now as a motif in these works. I see in it memories of crossing it unknowingly and years later sitting under the wooden planks and deciding to stay after long periods of wandering. I see laughing til my cheeks hurt on the first date with my husband, of teaching our children to swim and their squeals as the cars roll overhead and now the studio, hidden in the trees all along. I am beginning to see in it something else too - an anchor and an axis, a point of convergence, a rickety symbol of hope in our future, a mark that I now realise has appeared in many of my paintings before. However my work manifests I am always attempting to make space for synchronicities, to lean into the unknown and follow clues that don’t initially seem to make sense or connect. My process involves trusting this, to pursue clarity behind the chaos.