Landscape complete & interpreted

Each panel 2 foot wide by 3 foot high.

Can you see the shadow of a bicyclist in the middle panel on the bottom left of the bike path, behind the prominent cyclist. This symbolic element can be read as the shadow of our journeyman-skywalker. The shadow appears black and I wanted that to reflect the haunting of our solo Canberran braving the elements, having stolen this land from the traditional owners and also give the main bike rider a sense of running from his personal, psychological shadow. Over the whole of this manufactured, beautiful landscape there are no people but for our head down rider and the others looking out of their apartment windows. As if each is afraid to put foot on the land. The little picnic area behind him is empty.

Above our journeyman flies his spirit symbol a bird, which in close up looks like the local grey and pink bird called a gallah. The word is used as an insult in Australia meaning a real idiot. And here that can be read as the Fool who steps out on the spirit journey; in the Tarot pack's journey and in Shakespeare's plays. The Fool who is redeemed by his child like innocence.

In silent witness is a stand of four ancient olive trees in the middle panel, bottom right hand corner. This appears to be part of an olive grove, with one of the trees incomplete as it meets the third panel. I intentionally created a chrisitan reference with the two crosses formed by the shadow of street lamps accross a path - taking a leaf out of Kandinsky's painting 'Old Town II' of 1902 - a lady on a path crossed by the shadow of a fence. I didn't realise the symbolism of the olive grove until I saw Andrew Denton's critical documentary, 'God On Our Side' about chrisitan broadcasters in the USA.



There is the remains of a morning mist hugging the mountain in the first panel. The time line is left to right, from mornng to late afternoon in the last panel.

In the second, a gallah floats beside a naked tree below, a skeleton of limbs or a burnt out hulk or is it the last tree to come into spring bloom, still with traces of frost or snow on its limbs - like the Oscar Wilde story of the giant's garden. In that story, a little boy befriends a fierce giant in a garden that seems perpetually in winter until the giant's heart melts in caring for the boy who turns out to be terminally ill, leaving our giant transformed and his garden open to all the children around. In my personal psychology all three elements connect - the skeleton of our body from which our spirit soars like a fool on its soul journey. The burnt out hulk of a body, still standing like a eucalypt tree, like a phoenix that regenerates after a fire storm. And the late bloomer. All speak about my view of my own life, soul and body.



How about the ghostly figures walking the plank. I wanted to tell the story of the traditional owners and leave it ambiguous enough for the white folk to be the ones walking the plank into a lake of their own creation. How about people at those 3 windows of the building at far right of this third panel. Inside they appear to live with a structural disconnect from the landscape. This is emphasized by that big swathe of flat cobalt green; by the surreal street light and the avenue seen from above that leads to it, completely out of perspective yet somehow believable. On the top far left corner of the far left panel is a suggestion of a telecom tower on its green hill that we call Black Mountain. The tower appears through the arch on the same panel. It is from the top of the tower that the view of the tree lined avenue in the far right panel derives.



In the middle distance of the middle and right panel is Lake George, a natural lake carved out by glaciers and once an inland sea, which stands on the outskirts of Canberra. Driving in from Sydney and out from Canberra, one has to cross the edge of this lake, completely dry from years of local drought. In the middle of the highway along its dry shore is a toilet convenience and rest area, which marks a memorial of a soldier who won the Victoria Military Cross in WW II. We are not afraid as the desert encroaches Canberra?

And in the far distance of the middle and right panel, faintly held on the horizon are snow covered hills. I'm pointing to the Snowy Mountains about three hours drive from Canberra. They are covered in snow gum and alpinbe heath, and beautiful white crisp snow for a few months of winter. But mountains? I've painted them as gentle hills.

The afternoon light casts a long shadow from the street lamp, suggesting west is to the left and that our cyclist is heading north, the direction of the warm winter sun in the southern hemisphere. He is about to leave the second panel and in the time line suggested by the first panel's early mornng, he is about to enter the last third of his life.