the driest twig....

I started "The Magnolia Project before I had my second child. In those first blurry months I trudged up and down the huge hill in the Magnolia orchard every Tuesday stopping to take photos and make sketches, then push Sweet Pea, in her pram to the next tree When it came time to make the drawings on the pots I was puzzled, when I've drawn flowers before it was about the human body, blossoming sexuality, the sensual joy of flesh, my body felt worn out and practical. I was connected to the subject mater but it seemed strange to me that I was drawing these fleshy pristine flowers.



At the very end of 2008 I made a small series of work for Salmon Galleries in Sydney As I was making this work and idly skimming thoughts around about the year drawing to a close I realized that these flowers were not about the body at all. They are about the triumph of hope, about creativity, the resonance for me lies in the knobbly,gnarled magnolia branches putting forth fragile, fragrant blossoms, the deception of appearances. The unstoppable, reassuring rhythm of reproduction is a powerful metaphor for the well-spring of creativity. Sleep-deprived, time deprived, worn out, the driest twig still produces a blossom in Spring.