Deslee Hancock, Loss is Ragged

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Country : Australia

Materials : Mexican and Italian smalti, marble, travertine, limestone, onyx, found stone, granite, mudstone

Dimensions : 38 x 82 x 3.5 cms

Experience of close fires in January 2020 drove deeper the need in me to explore the issues of climate change in my art. The loss came crashing in – visits to a silent forest where the earth’s bones were lain bare, her skin melted, so many animals gone.

I wanted to make a work that showed the ragged loss – and the relentless fraying.

This work has been made using symbolic elements – bones of earth, shed skin of granite from burnt boulders, substrate of bark shapes.

The making unsettled me – I wanted to fill the canvas and make it beautiful again.