Series of Reveries

National Art School, Rayner Hoff Project Space

BFA 3rd Year Drawing, 2021

Having found Dad’s Stockman diaries from the early 1960’s onwards, and not being ready to part with them, I wanted to honour his memory by imbuing them with a new life. My drawing project started with Dad’s 1963 diary, reading the entries and responding to images I saw and marks he had made while recalling memories of my time growing up on the land and spending time with him out in the paddocks. My initial idea was to use these sketches as a starting point for larger works - I explored these ideas in the first semester. After a few months it became apparent that the beauty, essence, energy and emotion was all held within the pages of the diary itself. When working on large scale paper and moving away from the materiality of the diary, the intimacy and sense of place was lost. 

Working on top of Dad’s hand writing and reading the entry for the day bears little influence over the drawing for that page. The thought and inspiration for the drawing may have come from a different entry, however, all relate to working on the land, responding more to the material rather than the subject matter he was writing about. 

While working on the diary pages I was conscious of adding a layer in the present over words that were written some 60 years ago, sensitive to leaving fragments of history to come through. Aware of my hand markings over Dad’s, both of us touching the same page at different times, and watching my ink washes dissolve his ink writing and merge together, have been very special to me.

My work is a series of reveries.  The materiality of the diaries providing the ground for connections across time, while I enjoyed working, lost in my thoughts, daydreaming about Dad and the fragility of life.