The focus of the series Natural States has been to find fresh perspectives and processes for responding to Australian nature in my urban environment. The impetus for making this series arose from my experience of driving through newly landscaped city parks. For the purpose of making visual documentation I also walked along median strips, analysing my initial impressions and imagining a previous state of nature.

In creating the work, I consciously articulated, in paint, the various spaces of the natural environment. The backdrop of distant trees punctuates the horizon, while bitumen and grassy zones press against the edges of the foreground trunks. The trunk interposes itself between different aspects of the urban, asserting itself as an alternative.

In searching for patterns, I see within the natural renderings of the trunk a kind of traffic, a ritualistic process marking out that fine line between order and chaos. Shifts from monolithic to microscopic, from realistic to abstract, prompt the viewer to participate in questioning familiar constructions of both urban and natural elements. But change is the only constant. In Natural States there are always possibilities that the symmetrically placed urban trees may grow out of alignment, deforming the expectations and the vision for the planter, planner and painter.