'Nuyina' is a piece I've wanted to make for several years. Glitter and acrylic on a canvas background. Nuyina shows the Aurora Australis in the background and the unusual Tesselated Pavement in the foreground, an iconic part of Tasmania.
When the young girl left her home for the first time to seek new ideas and ideals, she took her love of bursting colour and joy with her. As she travelled further and further south, she came to know with astonishing happiness the ethereal beauty of the Southern Lights, or as her local ancestors called the intriguing phenomenon, ‘nuyina’.
The original Australians believed that the Aurora Australis showed bushfires in the spirit world. I created this work in response to Australia’s shocking and devastating, scorching hot start to 2020. How will Australia respond to these bushfires, and how will the wisdom of the original Australians guide us today?
The Tessellated Pavement shows a great juxtaposition between the flowing, ever-changing, intangible aurora and the grid lock of life literally set into stone through generations and ages. We can be fixed in our viewpoint and yet the view is always changing, an outlook we have little actual control over. The darkness and the colourful light need each other to create spectacular shows, just as man and nature need to work in synchronicity. Nature will endure. Despite us.
'Nuyina' debuted at the Rotary Art Fair on the Gold Coast, March 2020.
When the young girl left her home for the first time to seek new ideas and ideals, she took her love of bursting colour and joy with her. As she travelled further and further south, she came to know with astonishing happiness the ethereal beauty of the Southern Lights, or as her local ancestors called the intriguing phenomenon, ‘nuyina’.
The original Australians believed that the Aurora Australis showed bushfires in the spirit world. I created this work in response to Australia’s shocking and devastating, scorching hot start to 2020. How will Australia respond to these bushfires, and how will the wisdom of the original Australians guide us today?
The Tessellated Pavement shows a great juxtaposition between the flowing, ever-changing, intangible aurora and the grid lock of life literally set into stone through generations and ages. We can be fixed in our viewpoint and yet the view is always changing, an outlook we have little actual control over. The darkness and the colourful light need each other to create spectacular shows, just as man and nature need to work in synchronicity. Nature will endure. Despite us.
'Nuyina' debuted at the Rotary Art Fair on the Gold Coast, March 2020.
