Art After Fire
In the aftermath of the devastating 2019/20 Australian bushfires, I was selected as one of ten artists—six from Australia and four from the United States—for OUTPUT: Art After Fire, a pilot project supported by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade through the Australian Cultural Diplomacy Grants Program. The project supported fire-affected communities in southeast NSW and the American West by assisting visual artists and writers whose practices had been shaped by bushfire.
That experience marked a turning point in my practice. After witnessing the scale and intensity of the destruction firsthand, I made a decision to focus my work on raising awareness about climate change and the broader ecological crisis.
This ongoing body of work responds to those events and their lasting impact. It explores how we live with loss—environmental, emotional, cultural—and how beauty and devastation can coexist. I use a process of digital layering, combining photographs of my burnt timber paintings with native plants to evoke the tension between fragility and resilience.
The aesthetic is intentionally seductive. I want to draw viewers in with beauty—then leave them sitting with something more uncomfortable: a reminder of what’s already been lost, what’s still at risk, and what it means to live in the aftermath.
