Sharleen Smith
River cycles
Water in our waterways changes and goes through different cycles depending on what is happening around it.
Water in our waterways changes and goes through different cycles depending on what is happening around it.
I painted this flowering gum as raging bushfires burned across our beautiful country.
Is the sun rising each morning, the journey of the sun? Or is it the journey of your soul?
2020 has been difficult with lockdowns because of the Covid pandemic.
The story of this painting is of two jilted lovers that lost all hope of finding passion in another.
What the frack!? Poor cows and their… bottom burps… have long been blamed for the depletion of the ozone layer leading to the demise of the planet.
The Australian Landscape is often subjected to extremes of flood and fire, but plants have evolved to survive these catastrophises.
Sometimes we find ourselves lost, covered up by all that happens – to us, by us, for us.
As the ashes settled on bushfire devastated land, nature began the long journey of recovery. Darkness and despair were felt by many Australians and is represented in the artwork’s dark depths and layers of background. The Rainbow Lorikeet is the centre of this artwork. Its beauty has been captured in abstract ways to evoke a sense of hope and recovery. The use of bright and bold colours evokes a feeling of a light at the end of the tunnel.
Like the Phoenix, the Ephemeral Lagoon, also known as a billabong, has its own cycle of life.
As humans we are a single strand of fibre, we are delicate, fragile and weak; but when we are spun together or gathered in groups our strength increases.
Beyond the yesterdays is my interpretation of this year’s theme, ‘Phoenix’.
This house gives me the opportunity to draw straight lines, it makes me feel secure.
This work represents the perspective of a risen phoenix looking from above, using a palate of blue tempest.
A few years back while on holiday on Fraser Island, I saw this trawler grounded not far from the Mauhino shipwreck.
I was shattered…
As neighbours helped us extinguish flames of a bushfire threatening our farm in the foothills of the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, we feared for Quails nesting under a bush on the edge of the timberline.
The earth may burn but the animals will survive.
Rising from the ashes is a difficult process that every person faces.
The body of this piece represents the chaos the world is facing.
The gardener is a self-portrait that retells the Greek myth of the Phoenix through a personal lens.
Chinchilla Wattle (Acacia Chinchillensis), is one of the 600 plus species of wattle distributed across Australia.
The secret garden – you never know what is around the corner.
This multimedia piece celebrates the rebirth of our community through inclusiveness and acceptance.
The world we recognise seems to be crumbling and burning down around us.
After fire destroyed the house and garden on this property at Yaraka, this resilient Bougainvillea showed us that there is always a way to start anew.
My husband enjoys telling the story of the Box trees which dot the flat around our home.
Out of the ashes, cracked dry earth, remnants of forest and a new virus, a new life emerges.
This sculpture is carved from a salvaged Budgeroo tree stump that survived a bush fire many years ago.
Australian fire hawks had long been thought of as an Aboriginal myth until recent studies have proven their existence.
‘Deep History’ is a time warp about the darker past of the Tara Shire.
I recently visited bushfire areas in various areas including the Snowy Mountains and Gippsland.
This work explores fragility.
The bush fires destroyed so much of our forests and the devastation was catastrophic.
When darkness surrounds…
The Phoenix is a symbol of the never-ending cycle of life and death.
Using the story of the Phoenix and how it rose from the ashes into new life as inspiration, I worked intuitively with a limited range of colours.
Sometimes I whisper to myself, “Just take one step, balance, breathe, then take another.”
Life can be a turmoil, but this painting made me feel calm and relaxed.
This painting is a patriotic picture sending a message that we as Australians will arise despite what confronts us.
The inspiration for my work Reclamation came from an unusual piece of wood destined for the firepit one night.
Inspired by the natural shape of a salvaged, bushfire damaged tree stump, this artwork depicts the legendary Phoenix as a graceful fire bird rising from its ashes.
The calendar year of 2019 saw our part of the Western Downs measure a mere 100 millimetres of rain which sounds much more impressive than the equivalent four inches in old speak.
Unfortunately, not all animals survive, but the spirit has risen and travelled on to the spirit world.
On 18 May 1980, Mount St Helens, in Washington State, USA erupted, decimating everything in its path.
No person is an island.
For years we have been consumed with fears about terrorism, drought, fire, flood, climate change and now the pandemic.
I have always found the mythology of the Phoenix intriguing.