Hollywood Juniper and the persistence of longing
I’m far from any kind of elite, but I really like the idea of having some wild spiral trees in my vicinity. There’s something very Dr Seuss about them - not only the wiggle and twist, but the fact that they can develop that sideways list. They bring to mind a plethora of Tim Burton films and a kind of hallucination of the Umbrian countryside. They look a little bit like my hair after a day in the trenches of a location photography shoot. They’re how I’d draw a tree if it was meant to be part of a dream.
Imperfect
I won’t lie. I was quite scared about colouring this print. I hadn’t done something like this in more years than I care to admit, and the cost of the print was still basically a hundred dollars. I’m not printing it again just because I messed it up, so there’s a bit riding on the steadiness of my hand, and the choices I make for colour. When I was the first few strokes of pastel in, the sweat was beading on my nose, and I had to have a moment to collect myself.
A red coloured pencil.
I chose red, a rich velvety red, to colour the title in. It involved many rotations of the sharpener to get the thing done. What remained of the pencil was less than half of the original unblemished length. When mum discovered it, she was really unhappy that I had used it so exclusively. The precious set was now unbalanced - the rainbow rank interrupted by a much shorter member. What ensued was the biggest fight we ever had, before or since.
Origin Stories
I could write about the white guy with the afro, lead guitarist of The Naked Ape rock band, smoker of weed, builder of houses and culverts and bridges. And his exotic trainee teacher girlfriend, who he wooed with his badass backing skills using the steering knob on his Valiant Wayfarer ute.
Tea and biscuits and pieces of the past
When I was working in the early stages of my Master’s project, I took a collection of voice recordings from a guided conversation between my mum and her sister, about their remembered childhood at Waitai, on D’Urville Island. Something mum said changed the direction of my enquiry, from being specifically about inherited history, to something much more fluid. She said, in reference to the feud that broke the Moleta family into two, ‘Family folklore can warp and change with the telling’. It shook me, for its absolutely liberating truth.