40x40x4cm acrylic on hand-built panel, hanging wire attached, signed on the front.
Shelter in the Trees is the next part of my Shelter series, which features eucalyptus leaves. Framed in a deep light pine tray frame, 42x42x7cm for a contemporary look.
The Shelter series has been developed from drawings I made from life in my garden from mid-February to mid-May 2022. I drew every day for 100 days in ink in a sketchbook. The summer of 2022 was very wet due to a second La Nina in the Pacific Ocean. I had to shelter most days on our back veranda or under a beach umbrella. I would sit low to the ground so that the paper didn't get splashed, I'm sure I looked like a life-sized artistic garden gnome.
I have loved the large flowering eucalypts since we arrived here. When my daughter was in grade 2 at Samford State School I volunteered to help with the ANZAC day wreaths. My mother was very keen on flower arranging and made floral displays ar her local church and hospital most weeks for decades. When I arrived at school for wreath making the kids had brought in random cuttings from their gardens which I had to arrange into wreaths to lay at the school ANZAC assembly in the school hall. One child had brought in a sprig of the bright pink flowering eucalypt, known as summer red eucalyptus. It was the strangest flower I had ever seen, they look like sea urchins and are wildly over the top. I love them and when we started our garden we bought some tube stock. Our garden is extremely finicky. Some things grow others refuse. My eucalyptus did grow and flowers occasionally. The flowers are now high in the branches.
When I was drawing the garden I looked up one day into the canopy of the eucalypt. I was hoping for flowers. There were buds and gum nuts and elegant leaves. They all made brilliant negative space. This is my third mini-series based on my drawings of the tree.
I was exploring texture and colour in this piece and trying to keep the greens I love, off my palette. The eucalyptus leaves on this tree are orange and red when new, peach when on the ground and have red stalks.