Drumming and Dancing up place

Land-guage?

Our more-than-human landscape's drumming the wild

Memory linked with ceremonial metaphor.

We, country's human counterparts, attempt transliteration.
Do hosts read country for their guests?
Or does the land read every footprint and teach its own lessons?
What or who embodies its voice?

Travelling words lose their roots, reading replaces monstrous awe,
Maps poor substitutes for memory's metaphors.
Written waymarks replace the loss of the oral
(their placedness retains but remnant power).
Perhaps a sense of country remains?
Embedding us in this site's place and its long history and dreaming...
Our human/nature relationships exposed and celebrated.
Our oral culture remains in music's improvisation;
The land's tempo dimly reflected in our contrived percussions.
Can our arts transcribe this nature?

John Wolseley dwells in small patches of landscape and precisely paints its flora and fauna, as individual things that capture the whole sense of a place. His paintings are often documents of how we connect to the environment, both as a culture and as individuals. His many pieces mosaic together to form an emotive sense of the whole; his precise scientific detail overlays the vaster space to form an abstract beauty that tells the story of his (and others’) inhabitations. John’s paintings are like waymarks, objects on the side of the human path that show us the way we travel amidst the landscape. His work shows how we build up and construct the landscapes around us.

Ross provides workshops, master-classes and studio visits.