The Gift of a Garden

The Art of Giving

Group exhibition in the Southern Highlands NSW, November 2018

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Artist statement: The Art of Giving

The Gift of a Garden

I suppose coming to garden photography was inevitable. My family gardens with flourish. We’ve got a brilliant garden designer amongst us too. It’s in our DNA. So garden photography, unsurprisingly, has loomed up in my portfolio.

Garden owners have welcomed me and my camera into their spaces, some intensely private, some part of the open gardens scheme in NSW. And then there are the National Trust gardens, like this one right here. It takes my breath away. I see it as a carefully (painstakingly) nurtured gift that keeps on giving, and giving to all who wish to come, every season, year in and year out. My photographs are a thank you for the open gates and shared spaces. It is the gift of a garden in return, on paper. And on it goes.

I carry out the entire process – from creating the shot, post capture and carefully selecting paper, to printing in my Blue Mountains studio, called Feathermark. For these works I’ve chosen a handmade Japanese paper (washi 和紙, kozo fibre) because of the stunning quality and texture.

For each work in this exhibition I’ve funded the planting of a native tree for habitat through Trees For Life. That’s another small gift for our planet.

I printed the works in exhibition on handmade Japanese paper (kozo fibre), framed with Australian timber. 

My footprint for this exhibition (and Amazon Rainforest…)

In addition to funding the planting of Australian native trees, I’ve also offset my carbon footprint for this exhibition. To do this I chose the CIKEL Brazilian Amazon REDD Project. This project conserves 27,434+ hectares of native rainforest in the Paragominas Municipality, Para State, Brazil. Read more about the project here.

Proof of the offsets for my part of the Retford Park exhibition is here, on the APX public registry.