Bark Painting

Bark Painting

2008

Many trees showed traces of bushfires. I collected some charcoal for drawings.
I read that people mixed charcoal and ochres with animal fat to make the pigments stay on their bodies and rocks.
I did not have animal fat, so I mixed the charcoal with butter and painted my version of bark painting onto some trunks of the Spotted Gumtree. This Eucalyptus tree sheds its bark in patches. My paintings evolved around the shapes of the patches. The very light yellow of them gave the most contrasts next to the black paint. In the years to come the bark patches will fall down, changing the paintings until they will eventually disappear.