Coochiemudlo Island

Many times I’ve been asked why I paint, but that’s like asking a writer why he writes or a hairdresser why she styles people’s hair. I don’t really know where that desire to begin practising art came from. No-one in my family painted seriously. There were a few dabblers here and there, and of course they mainly hid their ‘talent’ because they just wanted their work to be a hobby, who knows? Occasionally I’ll read about someone who has always painted and as a child never left

In the sclerophyll forests of the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, I grew up observing the dry, reddish-green hues of the eucalypt trees that eventually saw the region World Heritage listed. When people in the northern hemisphere asked me what the place was like, I’d often say: “Think the Grand Canyon, with foliage”. It’s quite true: remove the dense green blanket that covers the Blue Mountains and we’d be left with a stony, gold and pink landscape akin to Arizona, traverse

The natural environment of Coochiemudlo Island provides great inspiration for many of the island’s artisans, but just as many others will tell you it’s the peace and seclusion of island life that really gets the creative juices flowing. Ceramicists Denise Wright and Viv Wright are uniquely positioned to explain this phenomenon, having lived on Coochie for decades while growing their renowned arts practices here. This resident couple also pioneered the art of ensuring visitors

So common are parrots to this island continent that they factored in one of the earliest European names for Australia. Three centuries before Matthew Flinders, Portuguese explorers mooted ‘Psitacorum Regio’ (‘The Land of Parrots’) as a suitable name for the southern land they’d seen was replete with parrot life, and that name appears on the 1564 New World Map by Antwerp cartographer Abraham Ortelius. Paintings by Michael Burge are for sale at bluethumb.com.au Everyone has the