Moontrees

This limited edition work was developed in tandem with the original painting to explore connected ideas within a work. It is created by using the source material of the original painting combined with images of the painting in process and digital drawing.

The Sentience series was inspired by walking in a forest during a Vipassana meditation course. Looking up at the giant blue gums, their silent communication became quite palpable, as well as the sense of the very long time their conversations must take — days rather than hours, as their lives are much longer and slower than ours.

There has been extensive research into the sentience in plant life, highlighted in books by Monica Gagliano, Suzanne Simard, Merlin Sheldrake and Peter Wohlleben, which indicates that the conversations continue both through the air, via scents, and underground via the fungal networks. These works are attempts at expressing the interconnectedness of all things and the constant conversations that go on in the background, all around us.