The Eye of the Eagle

Aarwun Gallery O'Hanlon Place ACT 2913

24 July 2010

This page catalogues paintings and landscapes painted by Joy Engelman during 2009/early 2010. Recent focus on climate change and the flooding of vast stretches of inland Australia have brought Joy back to contemplate once again, the wonder of the Australian bush to survive over long periods of boom and bust conditions. Humans though have too short a lifespan to understand these major cycles of our landscape.

ABC PRESS RELEASE / BUSH BELLES COMMENT

OPENING NIGHT

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

“I lived the first 43 years of my life on the land. First, in my childhood on an a orchard where I helped to prune winter trees, spray winter oils for codling moth, picking and packing the various fruits, milking a cow in the early frost, the warm white creamy milk filling the bucket. I walked the fields and shot rabbits with a .22 rifle on weekends. These I skinned and cleaned ready for the table along with chickens and geese. As an adult, raised cattle, grew wheat and oats and pioneered the deer industry. The farm was taken by the banks from my family, distraught and tired from fighting urban bankers and unwise policy makers. My concerns now are for the lack of understanding we all show for the way the earth works in a holistic sense. Specialised and with narrow views, we blunder about destroying the planet that has nurtured us, disconnected as we are from “this Sacred Place”.

Recently we have all been exposed to images of a planet in crisis. As El Nino turns to La Nina and back again, a cycle of planetary change is in motion once more. Deep down we are aware that it is has happened before. Somewhere a primal memory stirs in each of us. As I watch the daily images of flooded inland areas, once known as creeks return to the majesty of floodplains, Lake Eyre full again whilst our town water supplies dwindle or get bought by a higher bidder, the mining industry, I am reminded that as humans, we are still a young species, our lives too short, our records only 200 years old, to really make sense of it all. In this series, I felt that if we could see from above, from an eagle’s eye view, the beauty and complexity of this place, it’s water flows and lifeblood, we might be drawn anew to contemplate what ”living in the land” might mean.

Living in and on the most ancient and the most fragile landscape on earth requires a very “light touch” - we haven’t had that. By importing European farming methods into “this sacred place”, we are well into the process of destroying our ‘benefactor’. Our methods and chemicals have brought salt to the surface, dried up large tracts of land and left bare to the winds, vast oceans of plains. We have scarred the land. The Mining Industry alike, rips and tears vast mountain ranges and ridges apart for the gold that adorns our bodies - vanity versus a healthy environment. We continue to rape the land.

But nonetheless, the land is beautiful, still wild and free and will survive long past the era of humanity. We will perish long before the land.”