John Wolseley, 2011, Melbourne gardens, Crepuscular, watercolour
Summary
Artist statement
From dawn to dusk, unseen and unknown to most of us, our parks and gardens hide a parallel world. The strange goings on and interconnected sagas of different animals, birds and insects are acted out in the dark velvet recesses of the Melbourne night.
One evening in Yarra Park I found myself running after a fox, which was chasing another fox. And then I looked up and saw a Peregrine Falcon – one of the fastest birds on Earth – swooping at moths attracted by the giant lights of the MCG stadium.
This painting was produced after many secret forays into the Fitzroy Gardens, Royal Park and the surprisingly large number of treed and gardened spaces in the city. I drew and photographed by the glow of street lamps, or sometimes using the light from the moon. Sometimes I felt like one of those nocturnal creatures, as if I had left my human form behind and had slowed to become a possum or a Purple Swamp Hen. I came to see some creatures as if through different eyes. A Growling Grass Frog materialised on a branch a hand’s breadth away. A Powerful Owl, tearing at the corpse of a possum, became visible in the dark interior of an elm tree. And in the sedges in the water at my feet a Banded Rail was looking for insects. Many of these events are now hidden in my watercolour.
The month the painting took to make changed, in a number of ways, my understanding of the natural history of urban areas. It made me more aware of the need to protect our parklands and not give in to the pressures of those who wish to ‘develop’ them. We tend to divide city and country into very separate categories, between the built and artificial environment and the wild and natural bush. But we often forget the extent to which wild nature shares our spaces. Perhaps changing our way of looking at these things ‘in our own back yard’ may help us find ways of saving and conserving those threatened species and natural systems beyond our cities.
John Wolseley
This artwork was commissioned for the City Gallery exhibition ‘Crepuscular’, held May to July 2011 and curated by John Kean.
