2013 Ghosts

Ghosts is inspired by the physical, psychological and emotional residue that accumulates in the minutiae of our physical surroundings, and grew out of my second residency in Hill End in April, 2011. As the haunting autumn twilight caused the soil to glow red and the ghost gums to gleam, there became a tangible sense of abandoned dreams of fortune and happiness hovering over the town. Once bustling with the prosperity that gold brings, now silent but for the larks calling eerily at sunset and the occasional carouse from the locals at the pub along the road. A Sunday night ritual sees the last of the weekend caravans make their exit along the avenue, the population shrinks again and a hushed stillness descends like a parachute gliding to the ground.

Not entirely knowing why I did so, I collected hundreds of withered leaves fallen from the trees in the remains of the orchard behind Murray’s Cottage.  Each one perfect and unique in its form, they were a delicate yet evocative metaphor for the sense of loss and memory I felt around me, and also a fitting symbol of the changing of the seasons and the transition into the silence and decay of winter.  The drawings are on tissues, perhaps an unusual and non-archival choice, and themselves fragile and ephemeral: they are often the receptacle for our tears during moments of intensity, both joy and heartbreak, and easily discarded when these moments have passed.

Watching the leaves fall I sense the echo of human joys and tragedies on a more timeless and universal scale, of the faded hopes and forgotten desires that haunt us like ghosts at the edges of all our lives.  Insubstantial and exquisite in their fleeting existence, they scatter in the breeze, wither in the harshness of the seasons, and collect in the corners amongst cobwebs and other forgotten things.

But in the greater stillness, the profound silence, the endless spaces and time beyond our comprehension, our human foibles are swept away again and again like the smoke from the cottage chimneys.  It is an eternal cycle that is overwhelmingly sad, and intensely beautiful.