When I went walking in Iceland, rocks came alive. Nowhere else yet had I encountered the dynamism that I found in these glistening specimens. I walked on them, felt them, drew them and danced on them. Then, I realised that I am one or at least my bones are the rocks that form the shape I inhabit.
Cool to touch, sharp and eroded, I felt each rock story, like the bones that crystallise our thinking. In Iceland, I attuned to their inherent language and they became part of my art practice. Each prepared ground of tissue invited colour, the felt experience of rock vibrancy, each rock I found was alight, carrying a story of northern light. I became lit by rock, my inner ecosystem stirred. I felt the land underneath and overhead; mountain water, sided by rocks, tumbled minerals, quivering and gushing, with a sulphuric undertone. Rocks are potent, holding a silent resolute authority in their luminosity. Volcanic and plutonic, they are the elemental underworld. It is all in the magma.
In Australia, I am in relationship with rocks, yet the contrast with the vitality of the Icelandic experience, Australian rocks seem ancient and more dead than alive.