The Red Sands Garden

This artwork was originally created for an exhibition that was part of a series describing a stroll in the native Australian Royal Botanic Gardens in Cranbourne. The artist’s statement reads as below: On entering The Red Sand Garden, the visitor is treated to a landscape design of colour and breathtaking view that is so like experiencing Australia’s Red Centre, it almost needs focal adjustment. For the flora that thrives here, it is in fact a harsh yet wonderous environment supporting only tough plants of short stature, often bearing fascinatingly beautiful floral structures like those of the Desert Rose and bizarre, aptly named Kangaroo Paws. Bottle brush flowers like Banksia make a popular source of nectar for pollinating birds like Helmeted Honeyeaters. A closer look reveals fan shaped Scaevola half-flowers and curious Lichen covered forms looking like branched abstract sculptures. Finalist, Stanthorpe Art Prize 2021 Queensland | Second Prize, Botanicals Exhibition, LightSpaceTime Gallery, Florida, USA 2018 | Equal Second Prize, Botanicals Exhibition, The ArtRoom Contemporary Gallery, USA 2019 Sculptured from Hahnemuhle (Germany) 300gsm cotton NOT, Arches (France) 310gsm cotton hot pressed mould-made papers and a variety of handmade Hemp, Flax and Kozo (Mulberry) papers from Awagami (Japan) and other Asian sources, some as light as 4gsm. Single colour ink wash background.