I have based my work on the first verse of Gerard Manly Hopkins poem: ‘When Kingfishers Catch Fire’.

I have sought to capture something of this poem through the images of land and tree: the ‘me’ or ‘I’ or ‘is’ of life. In the process I have used the tree and the reflection as a metaphor, collecting up Hopkins’ words: “What I do is me; for this I came” with the search to make sense of ‘being’.

I have also used the medium of ink and calligraphy to link our conscious thoughts from the images to the abstracts of the unconscious realities that exist through every facet of life. The abstracts become the dance, and the story we really want to tell.

I have chosen, one of Judith Wright's shorter poems to illustrate the work for the exhibition during Country Music Week 2010 at Andrea Bruno Art Studio.

I have been photographing the scribbly gums for years and trying to work out a way to show the European fascination for the script-like marks ( our "need" to make sense of them, to "read" them). 

The moth whose lava makes the mark is tiny and difficult to study, as everything disintegrates when you touch it - elusive. It has been named ‘Ogmogratis Scribula’ because the marks resemble an old Celtic script called ‘Ogma’. Each mark is a life journey for the lava and each one is unique. There have been six species identified each making different marks.

I find it difficult to deal with landscape - it's all too big for me, so I tend to look at the microcosm.

Wright uses the scribbly gum markings as a metaphor for the lives that are underneath the colonial occupation - mysterious and difficult, if not impossible to read. The land speaks in a strange voice. I often think how alien it all must have appeared to the early settlers who quickly made it theirs.

Wright was very concerned with reconciliation and ended her autobiography with an apology to the original inhabitants of the land. I think this poem expresses these ideas in a few short lines.