The Gift

Today is my birthday. Lucky for me I have lived to this age and seen a lot of things…. Yet I know so little. 10 years ago for my 50th birthday I raised funds to go to Dharamsala and to Lhasa. I planned to come back and make a Public Artwork based on Prayer Wheels and a global ethic…links to things we all hold close regardless of our political, religious or cultural background.

‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ is whats known as the Golden Rule and has common threads across most of the major religions and is core to our system of social order.

I researched, I met with craftsmen and women, I explored other religions, held community meetings and made plans. Then life got in the way as it does. Thoughts of the prayer wheel project have never left my mind.

Today 10 years later news drifts in about wars, crimes to humanity to the planet. I ask myself what can I do? This is my one precious life as the Dalai Lama said.

As an artist my greatest achievement is if people engaging with my work have an aha moment or shifts perspective in any way. As a cultural worker that is also the goal.

Today as the wheel of life turns, as I prepare for my exhibition In Consideration of Trees I am mindful of that opportunity 10 years ago to go to Tibet and India to meet the Dalai Lama and his words to me then and his reminder of appreciation of this one precious life.

“Every day, think as you wake up: Today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it.” Dalai Lama

The Importance of Nature

I get it; we want what we want….we’ve worked hard and we deserve a new house, a new car, a holiday, a new distraction. I get that. I get that we want to live in beautiful places or places we feel connected to. We want to be near our family, friends, culture, the things we like to do.

We want……and we want more.

I also get that the way we are going people are experiencing nature deficit, living removed from the natural world.

“For children and adults alike, daily contact with nature is linked to better health, less stress, better mood, reduced obesity – an amazing list of features no other product can ever match.”

— Friends of the Earth UK

Increasingly there are alternative ways of doing things rather than cosseting our children from nature, making use of Long Day Care and helicopter parenting. Ways to make our children more self reliant and closer to nature such as Daisy Turnbull’s book 52 Risks To Take With Your Kids.. or the Nature Play movement such as The Little Pocket at Beechmont.

So we go about our daily life with its concerns and pressures, and when we can we take a trip or a walk in nature and are reminded of how our best memories and feelings are connected with times in the natural world.

I am so grateful to the natural environment….

And I see it is struggling, under the pressures of population, development, climate change, pandemics and our involved humanity.

It seems we see ourselves seperate from the natural world, as an infinite resource to plunder. We can fly to Mars, we can send nano robotics into the human body in an effort to prolong life, we can create artificial intelligence to work for us but are we more evolved as a species? Have we learnt to co-habit with other humans in harmony, with the other creatures that share the planet and with the planet and nature itself? It seems we are slow to evolve to work for the greater good - must be something to do with the selfish gene ( a theory by Richard Dawkins)

“I ask myself not what nature can do for me, rather what can I do for nature?”

I am reminded of a talk by the author Kate Grenville at the Festival of Big Ideas. She was asked to talk about Climate Change… daunted and wondering what a novelist could contribute to the discussion she came to realise she could imbue her work with her own viewpoints on the matter and that in itself is significant as the arts works to shift perspective at a visceral level. (see my blog Seeing things Differently)

One way I can contribute is through my artwork, events and writing. Currently I am working on an Exhibition called ‘In Consideration of Trees’ which will be held in November at the Centre for Regenerative Arts in partnership with the Making Good Alliance.

It will be a three day event and will feature exhibition launch, panel discussions, walks, talks and much more. If you have any questions or would like to attend the opening contact me here.

In the mean time I must get back to my easel and the work that inspires me daily.

I would love to hear your thoughts too!

Bron

Later living on Tamborine Mountain my children enjoyed life playing outside under the Jacaranda tree

my now 34 year old daughter Leilani started life in a shed in the middle of a rainforest at Tomewin

Crows Ash from the Rainforest Mandala Series

Diamond Head: Summer 2019 from the Bushfire Series

Knoll markers from the Ring Tree series

Christmas musings

It is Christmas Day 2019.

Sydney skies are grey with cloud. The smoke from summer bushfires seems to have lifted. 

We decided to spend our summer holiday on the road visiting friends and relatives around the country.

Heading down the coast from Tamborine Mountain we drove into more bush fires around Port Macquarie, Taree, skirting Sydney  heading for Canberra the sky was yellow and the air difficult to breath.  From Canberra heading to the coast more fires at Braidwood, Victoria was green relief but heading into Adelaide the  hills were crested in billowing smoke and a pall of smoke lay over the landscape from Hay until we reached Sydney.

In my 58 Christmases, I have never known  our country to be suffering under so many fires in  so many places. 

A bush fire is a frightening experience and the devastation for communities across Australia must be a bitter pill.

On this day, this Christmas Day so many will be struggling with the aftermath of bush fires, of exhaustion, of dislocation.

On this day this Christmas Day, so many ideals are pinned.  The ideal party, family gathering, gratitude  and celebration, hope and peace.  But life isn’t always like that.

I remember the feeling two months after my late husband had died.  The shops screamed at me to celebrate, spend, party. Everybody was doing it…but not me…or that was how it felt. I am grateful for some pragmatic children who came up with a plan- to celebrate a goth Christmas., my husbands empty chair at the table, a sense of humour, and a firm nod to his tragic passing but also a nod to the going forward and a shaking of the head and fist at the so called traditions of Christmas shopping must dos.

Things have indeed changed over the proceeding years. Every Christmas is different. Different locations, different people around the table of picnic rug. A moving feast….one not everyone can cope with joining. 

I tip my hat to the ones for whom this is one of the most difficult days.  Days of enduring, remembering and avoiding.

This too shall pass and the smoke will clear.