Charcoal Trees

Charcoal Tree 1
This detail is one of a series of silkscreens on paper.

I wanted to portray the extent of the summer fires and the change they brought to our landscape around Bell in the Blue Mountains National Park, where thousands of hectares were burnt.
This series of burnt trees derived from frottages, taken by pressing paper onto charcoaled bark, leaving both marks and impressions.
I developed the images with silkscreen to include the precursor – fire, and to further involve the viewer in this forest’s trauma.
Quite quickly the burnt eucalypts that survived either shed their bark or showed new grow. Festoons of new leaves, both green and red, rapidly appeared, wrapping around the remaining branchless trunks. Small clumps of flowers, baby banksias and other trees started to sprout up in the dead leaves beneath them.
This sudden burgeoning should not however cloud the memory of this catastrophic event.

Name:Liz Perfect