Still Lives and Vandemonians

Still Life, Natura Morta, Dead Nature!

I started this series of hand coloured linocuts with an Australian take on the ‘still life’ in the most conventional understanding of the term. Native Parrots, fish and plants mixed with some exotica, including that misleading fish, the red herring!

This led me to more disturbing Dead Nature. The still lives of extinct Australian creatures, most notable being the Thylacine. His lonely presence haunts a few of the images. He’s joined by another Tasmanian extinct in the wild, Pedder Galaxias. The last Paradise Parrot ever seen now lies in a small draw in the Queensland Museum. I have portrayed this parrot as a taxidermied Victorian era relic, trapped forever under a glass dome.

Some of these images have been duplicated into digitally produced friezes.

A disc of four short tracks “Soundtracks to Extinction” deals with the subject through poetry, backed by gothic and atmospheric sound effects!