green

GREEN

                                  detail of collage GREEN, 2014

Green...so many connotations.

My parents have been GREENIES, i.e:environmentalists,forever.We were taken to almost every National Park in NSW camping and exploring I think.Dad always had his binoculars and his birdspotting books,and took lots of slides of all the wildlife.(I have not strayed to far from this influence suppose!

We had(and they still have)a garden full of natives,not a rose in sight.Dad even had a notebook that he used to jot down all the different types of birds he spotted in our yard.The notebook may be gone,but now they subscribe to all kinds of nature magazines,are members of every Zoo on earth,sponsor animals,and are staunch conservationists.  

So a love of nature was instilled from birth...my siblings too.Kind of a prequisite!For instance...my sister worked for the Wilderness Society for many years, and as a Filmmaker,and with her own production company, Dark Lake Productions environmental films have always been a passion of hers. My brother, a writer, has a blog called The Catchalot, all about the ocean, the sea and salt.So I would say we all most definately have that green gene in us.


Green too...apart from the whole environmental cause thing, is simply the colour of nature and life to many of us. I know I feel soothed when I sit in my green garden, with or without a cuppa...or just wandering around in it. And listening to the birds twitter, is a lovely addition to the morning cuppa.Sigh.



So...this collage...was done using books found at the op-shop,particularly one of the bird books I remember as always being in our hiking rucksack as a kid, old papers,bits and bobs...and was done quietly and over an evening,as I sat at my in-laws table,the telly on,everyone else either asleep or absorbed in their TV show.I was very anti-social, but I needed that quiet headspace time,a bit like meditation. Feelings of inner complete contentment.To help get balance.

I had been thinking about the idea of green as lush, and tropical, of life and nature...and my mind meandered back to the idea of that love of nature, those bird books, of Dad's, those ideas about being surrounded by nature as something remarkable and special.I was thinking of how being surrounded by green gives me those same feelings of peace and contentment as when I am creating.

So this collage I guess, is a bit of an ode to my Mum and Dad, to instilling that love of GREEN, in more ways than one.

GREEN , mixed paper collage 2014