Blue Gum at Wheeny Creek Oil on Linen 1200 x 2000mm $12,000
My favourite painting location in Western Sydney was Wheeny Creek. It is on the edge of the Wollemi National park, it offers a running creek, a myriad of painting options and tree types and is home to some magnificent Sydney Blue Gums.
My work explores the complexity of human relations through the figurative presence of trees in the landscape. This Blue Gum is one of the ancients, a Patriarch. Rather like Moses it holds its arms out wide while the battle for the land continues. (Exodus 17:11-12.) It remains, when most of the trees its age have long past been logged out. Symbolically it stands at the ford of the creek supported by a remnant forest of old blue gums saying to urbanization this far but no further.
Like the Ent’s of Tolkien or the great Trees of Narnia, it calls to arms times past and things only remembered in dreams: Times when trees of the fields clapped their hands. But with outstretched arms it also bears the mark of another sacrifice, the mark of the cross.