Inspired by a hike on the weekend before Christmas up Sammy’s Hill in the north of Canberra. We’d stopped for a picnic lunch under a tree on the summit, and noticed a wedgetail eagle lazily gliding across and into the valley to the west. We assumed that’d be the last we’d see of it as it was travelling quickly on the wind, but when we looked back on our descent it had returned, circling slowly with a friend for company.
It was a sunny day, but a storm was slowly building, a common sight in the months of persistent La Nina. The eagles were completely at home up there, masters of the skies and the thermal air currents rising off the hill. They didn’t seem to be hunting, or in any hurry to go somewhere, they were just happy to effortlessly drift and soar. They knew a freedom that so few of us share.
I must say I relished painting this one, as I could be totally free (as free as the eagles?) in my approach to the sky which I wanted to dominate the composition. There are many, many layers of paint and ink there, applied with large brushes and with ink dropped onto the wet horizontal surface and allowed to spread naturally into cloud shapes with only minimal guidance, continually changing my mind and altering the shape of the clouds until they matched my imagined vision of how they should be. I wanted the warm sunlit hillside to provide a strong contrast to the dark blues of the sky, with cool colours echoed on the boulders.
I spent considerable time on the higher of the two eagles. Had I taken a photo of it on my walk, it would have appeared as a dark silhouette against a lighter sky, but had I painted it that way it would have looked ominous, a hunter stalking its prey, not what I wanted to convey at all. Instead I envisaged an eagle full of subtle colour and sparks of brighter light – full of life and magic. It turned out to be a little reminiscent of a phoenix, which I don’t actually mind – I like the idea of nature bouncing back and growing anew after the damage us humans have caused.
“Soaring, gliding, drifting on the thermals” is acrylic and acrylic ink on framed 61x91cm birch panel, and is currently on show at my solo exhibition, “In the distance”, at WOTSO Health Space in North Strathfield. It is also available for purchase online from Nationwide Curating’s website.
