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 returned to the same view, watching, listening and drawing the slow changes in the landscape seen from my studio window at the Dunmoochin Foundation, an artist community on Wurundjeri-willam Country (Cottles Bridge, Victoria). Set up high in the trees, I witnessed a place in constant motion. The light shifted, the trees swayed and the earth moved in rhythms familiar and precarious.
Each drawing, made with charcoal and sealed in beeswax, is a small window into this impermanent place. The wax acts as both a shield and a skin, preserving what is fleeting, holding this dusty place before its blown away.
This artist's book documents a visible landscape but also the quiet tension of place on the edge of change, where the sky burns gold one moment and brims with a foreboding force the next. Every shift here, in light or in the wind, hums with anticipation of what is to come. The fear of what has been has never left.
This drawing has been a finalist in the 2024 Crescendo Artist Book Award and the 2025 Libris Artist Book Award and was exhibited in 2026 for Local Remix:Assembly alongside works from the Nillumbik Collection at Montsalvat Arts Centre.
the mountain is an introvert 2024
Charcoal, pigment & beeswax on paper
25x25cm