circuscow
hillclimbcow
2 grey cows
cowbump
browsingcow
lookoutcow
worrycow
dootycow
haybalecow
cowrun out of the picture
Plot Ratio 2008
In the past, I have worked with ideas about the land, ‘the motif’, the panorama, land use past and present.Now that I am living full time within a rural setting I have been able to more fully consider the usage of the land that surrounds me, be it farmed or reserved.
I live in the district of Kentdale adjacent to the coastal strip of the south coast where the rainfall allows for constantly green pasture. The herd animals, in the main cattle are well ensconced comfortably fed and bred in their allotted space. Notwithstanding the various cattle breeds, individual animals take on certain ‘attitudes’. I have worked with this idea in particular the Green Cow and 6 Cow series. The area around the Denmark / Kentdale districts is rolling pasture with sometimes quite steep hilly stands of karri trees and outcrops of rock. I have become conscious that you are constantly in sight of hills; it is not a flat space. My interpretation of the local view is generic rather than particular, with the exception being the Mehniup Hill panorama. This hill reserve seems to have a local resonance that I immediately responded to as special.
I am always conscious of the ‘gaze’ – the vertical and the horizontal scanning, reading and interpretation of open spaces. I am interested in the difference between looking through a landscape, down into a landscape and a certain ‘tilting’ of the space which occurs. These concerns are apparent in the Plot Ratio and Pastoral Idyll series.