This year I have joined the local Wildflower group in Nathalia. Once a month they go on a field trip in our local area to identify species. I find it truly inspirational and can’t believe how many interesting and beautiful places have been right under my nose all this time! In March we visited the Barmah Lakes and I became fascinated by the Reed Warblers (even though they would not sit still for a photo!).

The following piece of work is inspired by this activity. It consists of four vertical panels that can be viewed as a whole or in part. It started life as experiments in digital photos on fabric. I was challenging myself to make as many different pictures from the one photo as I could. When I pieced them all together it looked like a dogs breakfast! So I cut them up and pieced it with other fabrics in an improvisational way. This became the background for the birds and reeds.

These are only sneak peaks. You can see it in its entirety at my solo exhibition at The G.R.A.I.N store, Nathalia (Victoria, Australia) from October 5th until the 25th of November. 

A big thank you to another local artist and naturalist, Anne Timm, who travels with me and answers all my questions.

Original and digitally altered photo of reeds for background piece.