Zoe Tweedale
Saskia
120×90cm oil on canvas
Zoe Tweedale
Paradise
26 November – 21 December 2022
Distant birdsong, the rich smell of damp and darkness. Green moss, the distance obscured by leaves. Strikingly coloured and patterned animals are everywhere, but unseen. This is the rainforest as remembered or imagined, an idea yearned for at a distance, safe from fires, floods, deforestation and climate change. A garden of earthly delights, a place of abundance and decadence. Paradise.
After the past few years, with the charms of home and familiarity wearing thin, there is a restless desire to escape to somewhere else, a longing for sights and sensations fresh and unexpected, a place which is warm, beautiful and remote. In “Paradise” I have collected an eclectic cast of rainforest-dwelling animals, reflecting my ongoing fascination with the diversity of Australia’s wildlife, and a gentle challenge to our ignorance of this as a society beyond a select handful of charismatic species. The abstract stages they inhabit are saturated, vivid and rich: a wistful memory and echo of an absent habit.
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Another idea of paradise: The simple pleasure of watching your dog run along the beach, full of infectious joy at her own swiftness.
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