This gallery is a collection of paintings made onsite in natural surroundings. I traveled with my partner to Australia in early 2024 for an extended visit with family. It marked my first time on the continent.

Part of the undertaking was to regroup and recuperate. Accordingly, the signposts of guidance began to manifest out of the fog that had gathered around my life. Things appeared. Remembrances became a catalyst for renewal. Richard Power’s novel The Overstory from 2019 gently found its way into my hands. Simultaneously, I had already begun going back to the fundamentals of my practice. This meant drawing and painting my surroundings free of anything more formed than impulse.

All the unfamiliar flora and fauna, birdsong, color and light were immediately engrossing. And I recalled the ongoing reminders in my life of how crucial trees in particular have been in my sense of a connection to something bigger. Effortlessly graceful.

The Understory Collection, then, marks a humble return to the power of immediacy, the here and now, for slowing down and tuning into how the time scale is experienced so differently by trees and other plants. It is a recalibration to sit and study without agenda.