This exhibition results from two and half years of Covid and my longing to escape. I spend a lot of time walking in nature and lockdown deprived us all of that. I began to see my work as a doorway back into that world; every day I could open the door and move through the country in my mind. The paintings would change daily as my inner landscape changed. A bad day and everything went dark; a good day and the light would return. Paths appeared and vanished, flowers grew and were painted out — forests, choking vines, dangerously beautiful seas, big blue skies, and wild stormy days. Then, suddenly, the painting would tell me to stop, and I would walk away.

When I walk through the forest I can feel the history in the earth, the people who owned it, the blood, the beauty, the snakes, the trees, the flowers, the endless cycle of spring, summer, autumn, winter, the music of this ancient land. It hums around me as I move through the landscape. I am an observer of that, and the awe it inspires in me I hold within as I paint and whisper to myself: "Let me be part of this, let me be part of this, let me be part of this..."