DAVE GROOM
Artist Statement

 

This body of work was done immediately after the fires of September 2019. It was work that flowed out and was certainly a form of therapy for me. Having a way to make sense of this loss was a valuable thing.

 

I have incorporated elements of fire in work before, several times, but it was almost always as a background part of the story, an element that constantly appears in the natural Australian landscape.

 

This new work though, has the fire and its effects, more at the forefront. It was all I could think about at the time. The wind, the flames, the smoke and the smell of burning timber, the glow at night, waking not to mist settled in the valley below, but instead, a carpet of smoke. But even when I was working on these pieces, subconsciously I knew nature would always find the balance, the best it could. Nature's beauty was always going to be in the background of these paintings and drawings.

 

It is only now, looking back at the regeneration that has occurred over the last year that the realisation dawns that nature will always heal itself the best it can. It will always regenerate. We as a species appear to be making it harder for it to do so, but that may well play out to our own detriment.