After an engraving dated 1512
10 - 28 April 2002
Artist’s statement
The seasonal changes taken for granted in the Northern Hemisphere are deep realities which we must remind ourselves of in New Zealand, because the Easter festival comes at the wrong time of year. In more religions than Christianity, Easter is a festival of Spring, of decline and renewal, of death and rebirth
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This exhibition consists of 34 paintings depicting the death of sheep providing fertility for the trees. The Tree of Life is an image used throughout the whole of human history, transformed in Christianity into the image of the Cross. The show represents the coming together in a new form of two earlier exhibitions, ‘Facts and Metaphors’ which dealt with the subject of sacrifice, and ‘Roots of Heaven’ which celebrated the tree.
My themes have always been the relationship between biological life and land forms. Here I have used images of sheep as creatures to sustain our lives physically and economically, as well as symbols of sacrifice to sustain our spirit. The tree, that age-old symbol of life, nourishes us in a thousand different ways and stands here for sturdy and vigorous growth.
