A few pages from my recently completed artist book, Ghost.   I have used the concertina form (14 pages) each with a tiny ceramic plate – drawn, painted and coloured, each with text, to evoke a sense of the land and sometimes the human place within it.  I love being in the landscape – drawing, painting and being alive to the sights, sounds and smells within it.  However, it comes with some anguish too – of the human impulse to destroy it,  the lack of regard for First Nation People’s relationship with it, and the fact that I have to leave it, at least temporarily.   I am also seeing and feeling the impact, the challenges, of living the urban life – finding connectedness to others, and meaning and purpose. These are some of the themes explored in this book.

The text is re-purposed from a book I picked up by chance in Tasmania (The Shadow Catcher, Marianne Wiggins).  I painstakingly cut out sentences and individual words and re-arranged them to meet my own purposes.  I found Wiggins’ writing is often poetic and summons up similar emotions to my own work.

I thoroughly enjoyed many days and nights choosing the text and arranging the pages during my recent residency in Tasmania.  I was grateful for a large room in which to work, as the book stretches out to quite a few metres, and there were pages spread everywhere.  At times though, it was a struggle to manage the paper of the text which warped and stretched when it was wet, and to keep track of tiny cut out words –  but I have learnt to accept these things.

The book will be included in the “Little Library on Suffering and Joy, a collection of handmade artist books.