dunmoochin
Between 2023 and 2025, I spent two years in residence at the Dunmoochin Foundation in Cottles Bridge. During this time, I found myself drawing with charcoal and natural pigments and I was particularly focused on the way that the light shifts here across the hills and trees – it is as unique as the landscape itself. Working from a studio set atop the house, I could see from the top of the hill the city skyline and also the start of the great dividing range. Many of these drawings were dipped in wax, which gave them a subdued, matte finish and altered their tonal depth. The extended period granted during the residency allowed me to work at a steady pace, observing and recording the way light moved through the landscape over different times of the day and year.
These drawings have taken many turns with some becoming an artist book, and others remaining tucked in sketchbooks. Several I feel work independently, and so I have grouped them all here.
the ground is the whole world 2024
Charcoal, pigment & beeswax on paper
67x43x4cm (framed)
The horizon line is a vast and repetitive form. It is something that we are individually, and yet also collectively, attuned to. It is something that we are never without. It is something we look towards, and it is a physical reference that guides us daily. A horizon defines a place, a location and a home. A horizon can define a moment.
A horizon line can span mountain ranges and the smallest of mud mounds. We look to the horizon to anticipate the future. We look over our shoulders to learn from where we came.
Sometimes we can barely see the horizon in front of us. A horizon line can be obscured.
My horizon might not be your horizon, but it is something I can share with you and you can share with me.
This drawing has been a finalist in the 2024 Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award and the 2025 Hazelhurst Works on Paper Award.
dunmoochin 2024
Artist book of 50 loose leaf drawings encased in wax, drawn with charcoal and found pigments, housed in artist made solander box with wax drawing inlaid, 26x26x5cm, 2024
For 18 months, I have returned to the same view, watching, listening and drawing the slow changes in the landscape seen from my studio at the Dunmoochin Foundation, an artist community on Wurundjeri-willamCountry (Cottles Bridge, Victoria). Set up high in the trees, I witness a place in constant motion, with the light shifting, trees swaying, the earth moving in rhythms both familiar and wildly precarious.
Each drawing, made with charcoal and sealed in beeswax, is a small window into this impermanence. The wax, both shield and skin, preserves what is fleeting, yet holds the weight of uncertainty. ‘Dunmoochin’ is not just a reflection of place, but of its presence, of weathering, of holding on.
This artist's book captures not just a visible landscape but the quiet tension of living at the edge of change, where the sky burns gold one moment and brims with a foreboding force the next. Here, every shift in light hums with anticipation.
This drawing has been a finalist in the 2024 Crescendo Artist Book Award
Libris Artist Book Awards, and exhibited in 2026 for Local Remix:Assembly, with works from the Nillumbik Collection.
the mountain is an introvert 2024
Charcoal, pigment & beeswax on paper
25x25cm