Celebrating Townsville Exhibition - The Artists

This mixed media work is one of a series of six the artist made that relate to her investigation of the seasons in the tropics. The artist was puzzled by people saying that there are no 'proper' seasons in North Queensland. She supposed it was because many early children’s books (often written and published in the United Kingdom and Europe) talk about seasons that are typical for north Western Europe and have no bearing on the seasonal flow in North Queensland. The artist concluded that the seasons in North Queensland were ‘proper’ but that they had no specific names and were therefore not recognised.

The artist observed that in North Queensland we have a wet season and a dry season. Each of those has a beginning, middle and an end. She then came up with a series of six distinct seasons, creating paintings that show what happens in nature during those months.

The series of paintings is called Seasons without Names. Each work in this series consists of a large panel and a smaller one; the larger panel is a watercolour landscape scene (typical for that time of year and her newly named season), while the smaller one functions as a comment panel using artefacts, and found items that characterise the quality of that time of year.