Sue has been on an investigative journey concerning safe havens for some years; her work and the variety of these presentations reflect her long slow thinking.

News articles concerning climate challenges were collected from 2018, after completing a trans-disciplinary PhD that intertwined art with geography. These newspaper clippings were a foundation, not a place to rest for her. Her painted series begins with exaggerated, potential earth changes, but then draws upon the landscapes of her childhood travels, where safe havens, for her, are marked by red spots. More idyllic, local landscape scenes have then been made into portal-like viewing circles, and further round patterns have depicted gleanings from garden pickings in her community, and beachcombing. She has later made her own natural watercolours to make still life paintings of such collected treasures from the natural world, some made into diorama boxes, others inspiring small jewellery pieces to offer to the architecture, itself. They could be house pendants. Small, vintage, handcrafted, household objects have been scrounged and repainted…in preparation for further adornment with small ‘spot’ paintings, that mirror her earlier images.

One could funnel down a hallway, consumed by the self, only to have the reminders of tidal flow, the ever-moving clouds, or a bird delivering you a message...through a modest art representation on the hallway cabinet, curtains or wall. Emotions may be strong at this time, but our strength and adaptiveness may be enhanced through metaphoric analysis of nature’s totems.

For Talia, voices of the past are echoed in belongings within a house that will never be lived in the same way again. Unassuming items and objects within this place carry memories of what once was. They carry fingerprints and they carry us. Those who left us long ago still exist in something…