Past Exhibition – 'Grootbos' by Arabella Caccia

'Grootbos' by Arabella Caccia (10m x 2.3m oil on linen)

Artist statement

In 2014 I began a body of work inspired by time spent in a forest of ancient (800 year old!) Milkwood trees. I walked and sat, listened and drew amidst twisted ropes and tendrils, branches covered in old man’s beard, shadows and moving swords of light, in a space that was old when the settlers first arrived and that will be here, unchanging but always renewing, when we are all forgotten.

The deep quiet is broken by birdsong – calls of warning or challenge or plaintive melodies of love. These are places of childhood dreams (who didn’t thrill to “The Enchanted Wood?”) and of nightmare too (“Where the Wild Things Are”).

A place where one would meet a lover or a brigand or even a wood nymph. In a Jungian sense it is our feral nature and the guardian of our spirit and can never fully be explored.
 
Out of the preliminary sketches and drawings came “Grootbos”  - a painting 10m long and which lies at the heart of this celebration of a wild and beautiful place.
 
– Arabella Caccia 2015