Grafted Landscape (Southern Tasmania), painting selected for the Glover Prize 2011

If I am honest I would have to say that I am not sure how well the graft has worked. As a migrant to this island I have been grafted onto the rootstock of a Tasmanian family and place. Over the years the scion has fused with the rootstock but I am not clear what hybrid merging has occurred, what fruit I bring and what is welling up through me, something darker and older. I sympathise with John Glover. In his work I see the struggle between multiple, competing grafts each seeking to dominate the other. The work I am submitting contains, as it always does, traces of multiple landscapes, of merged heritage and complex histories. It should be labelled ‘Tasmanian’ as a mark of respect and to save confusion.