Peaceful Landscape Sketching Vlog | Nature Art ASMR | Minimal art Supplies | MFA | DIY Sketchbook
In this video I’m spending some quality time at my parents property in northeast Victoria where we spent about a week after Christmas and into the new year.
My parents inherited this land from a relative about 35 years ago. Back then it was a paddock with dam in the corner and one magnificent, gnarly old river gum tree. I remember when we planted several trees as seedlings and had to water them with buckets from the dam through summer, which was no small feat, as this is a 4 acre block. But over the years, these trees have matured and what my parents have created in this very dry part of Australia is an oasis of peace and calm that I love to spend time in. What struck me on this sketching journey, is that the maturing of these trees, coupled with my maturing through adulthood and into middle age.
The trees they planted are an interesting mixture of European and native varieties and as I’ve been progressing with my master’s I’ve been thinking a lot about that. I huge part of my creative research project ponders what it means to be a woman of European genetic origin in Australia. It also ponders what it means for our landscape which, in so many parts of our country, is this blending of plants and trees that are both native and of foreign origin. The impact of colonialisation runs deep here.
So it felt like the perfect project, as we entered the new year, to make some sketches of some of the trees I love most on my parents’ property, many that were indeed put here by my parents and will likely live on beyond them. And some that were already here, perhaps for many hundreds of years, that are part of this land and this landscape that is now mostly fenced farmland.
My aim with this new set of tree sketches is to really get to know these trees that I have grown up with, and to draw from nature, which I don’t get to do nearly as much as I’d like to. I want to connect with the unique qualities of each one and get a sense for how they feel in the landscape and how they feel compared to each other. What eventuates is an accordion sketchbook that forms a record of the unique landscape my parents have cultivated on their property and the trees that have matured as I have matured. Noticing that symbiosis became the key reflection of this exercise.LINKS:
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