73 cm (w) x 51 cm (h), pastels and charcoal on paper.
Date produced: 2006 and 2023

This was produced mostly on-site. I am keen to use more abstraction in my pieces - that is, intelligently and/or emotionally using relationships of abstract elements to express some aspects of the subject more efficiently.

This piece is an example of an image based on ‘simplified’ shapes. The colours used have come mainly from the understanding gained from my accurately observed colour studies, and from working on this piece directly from the tree. I enjoyed consciously ‘reaching within my intelligence and feelings’ for the solutions I finally settled on.

After reaching a reasonable stage of development, the piece felt as if it needed the inclusion of indications from other senses, such as sound, and smell. After experimenting with modifying colours, and still feeling the need for more, I decided to include a couple of stylised birds. These were developed a little more, and led to including representatives from much of the animal life that I observed at the tree over the course of the project: Rainbow Lorikeets, warbling Magpies, rats, many types of insects within the leaf litter, and the amazing little jumping spiders. These were all developed carefully so that they felt ‘right’ with the rest of the image.

I did the vast majority of this piece in 2006. After viewing it back for a number of years, I wanted to do a little more work on this piece (which I did in early 2023), mainly to ‘clean up’ some of the shapes and colours, but also to fine tune the overall composition.

Overall, it was a fun piece to produce, and I am very pleased to have produced it.

A photographic view of the subject tree in 2006 from a similar direction to that used for the pastel above:

Direction of viewing point shown on a map of the buttress roots and main lower boughs:

This map and the previous photograph are provided to help you to understand and/or appreciate the pastel more. Because this pastel was drawn largely on-site, if you go to the real subject tree with this display on your mobile phone or tablet, it is possible using this map of the tree to find the real place where the pastel was produced from. If you attempt to do this, please remember that I was sitting on a camp stool to do this pastel, and the tree has changed since 2006 (but typically changed only a little).

Note the inclusion of one of the small jumping spiders encountered under the tree. It has not been drawn to scale here, as the spiders are typically only about 1.5 cm long. They would typically climb up to the highest point of whatever they were on, then slowly outstretch their front legs towards their target, and then quickly jump to their target. When they jumped, they would produce an attached thin spider web that acted as a safety line, should they not reach their target successfully. They seemed to have an endearing personality, but then I was never bitten by them, and I was much larger than them. Like all predators in the wild, however, they would have been ruthless predators, and their numbers indicated that they were obviously successful.

Up in the tree is a magpie that I witnessed, warbling. I have tried to indicate the warbling.

Included are two Rainbow Lorikeets, eating figs high up in the canopy.

I included a rat that I saw running through the buttress roots, and a beetle among the fallen leaves and fruit. There were many insects amongst the thick leaf litter on the ground.