Returning
to Cairns in 1994 after a three year absence I noticed that much
had changed. Gone was the athmosphere that had attracted
me to this tropical paradise of North Queensland as early
as the mid seventies . The city and its
surrounding rain-forest and beaches then were like
mystical havens of peace and tranquility. Much of its
vegetation now is being cleared to make room for
magnificent mansions surrounded by manicured gardens not
unlike those I was used to in the big cities , where I had
lived for most of my life and what I had wanted to escape
from .
Seeing these rapid
changes from what it first was a "sleepy
coastal town in the tropics" into a busy "tourist
destination" got me to create nearly 70 paintings
expressing my feelings about these changes.
The series was given
four showings ,the last one being at the Queensland Arts
Council Gallery in Brisbane . The exhibition in Brisbane
was in conjunction with poetry created by Poet
Victor Barker who like myself was also from Cairns and who
also had felt these rapid changes. Victor had moved away and now
lives in Sydney while I stayed on.
I had always loved the freedom
of the tropics where every thing lives and grows as it
pleases no matter how much we , who came to enjoy its beauty tend to interfere.
It is this freedom in all that is surrounding me that
gives me the incentives I look for when creating my art.
The other is a profound love and respect I have for
past history from the early settlers to the migrants of
the fifties and later years . How these first settlers were responsible for having
laid the foundation of what is now Cairns , a tropical
paradise ,.. "cité de mon coeur".
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