Finding oneself. That is what you get going into the Outback of Australia. Camping on the edge of a cliff at Pender Bay for weeks, I embarked on daily excursions by foot to engage with the landscape. ​My experiences were then translated onto paper. Three realms of reality emerge from the sketching and painting, the visible, the non-visible, and the ancestral.

When observing Nature, we are aware of  what we see, smell and feel. But there are more to this, a world of energies and non-visible life. ​The world that the naked eye can see, and the world that is invisible, hidden, yet very active and full of astonishments, the landscapes of the psyche. In this painting I attempt to capture these two worlds, two worlds deeply interconnected, but also vastly different. It is like if they are mirrored in two realms, the conscious and unconscious, the visual and the sensory, the hard and the soft, the known and the unknown. 

Some final touches on painting. ​The soils, organic matter and water used in the painting were collected in the Northern Territory outback, where I have set up camp at Jasper Gorge close by to the Victoria River. Through en plein air drawing and painting I recorded the unspoken language of the Stokes Range and Fitzgerald Range landscapes, that I closely observed through my sensory experience of the place. The painting discretely discloses red soils, organic matter, trees, rocks, birds, the blazing sun and a place with soul – A place on Earth (or in Earth?) – a place where the ancestors dwell. 
​Approx. 101cm x 101cm (WxH)
Ink, acrylic, watercolour, graphite, soil, organic matter, and water from source on canvas
 
Roös, 2021

Using water and soil from the source combined with pigments and paint  to create the sacred place on Earth. This painting will be titled: "A Place on Earth (or in Earth?)". In this painting, I attempt to reveal the hidden story lines of the passage of time, geological and evolutionary time of a place. 

Wandering deep into the Otway Forest. This is the Country of the Gadubanud People. The presence of energy flows of the Otway Forest erupts at the centre, yet to the naked eye this is not obvious. We ask ourselves why do we feel so good, energised and well when emerging ourselves into this rainforest? The saying goes that deep underneath the soil the trees talk to each other, it connects with all other sentient beings, it connects with us. ​

Excellent exhibition at Vidler Art Parlour Geelong as part of the Geelong Design Week 2021. Exhibition: ​Hydro-Philos Storylines 
These drawings and paintings are my expression of feelings, experiences and interpretations of the various natural environments that I immersed myself into. Discovering and analysing the meanings of hydrophilic and hydrophobic elements, what the innate connections are between various life forms, including our human love of the waters – aquaphilia – and our place in this ecosystem.  Visit: ​https://www.aquaphilia.info 

When I rolled out the paper scroll in a small hidden corner of the mudflats of the extensive 30-square-kilometre Swan Bay area, a marine embayment and islands with interconnected ecosystems, it came to mind that wetlands, swamps and saltmarshes contain the layers of history of place – the blueprint of thousands of years, maybe millions of years in the making. I felt a deep connection to the patterns of the ecosystems, biotic and abiotic forms, evolutionary growth visible in the smells, sounds and visual beauty of colours and living structures in mud, microorganisms, plants, insects and birds. ​