"Capturing images of nature through photography has been an instinctive thing with me. I have always had the passion to present and reveal the natural world to people and the elements that make it up. I love getting out there, looking around and taking the time to see what our environment has on offer.

"It is truly enlightening to look around the place you live in and ‘truly see’ the images, patterns, colours and design of the natural world.

"We are blessed to live in the ‘big sky’ region with exceptional natural beauty in such a diversity array of environments.

"My photographs show the brightness and purity of colours within our environment. Though they are digital images, I simply take the photo and exhibit the image as it was. People often comment on the luminous colours in my images. That is how I, through my camera, have seen it. I see little need for, and make no use of, photo enhancing programs such as Photoshop for my images - natural true colour is the most spectacular.

"I have no professional background in photography and have very limited understanding of the technical elements of camera equipment. I often comment that it just comes from ‘within’, an instinctive appreciation for beautiful images nature provides, paired with a basic, well fashioned lens to capture the picture!

"It truly is ‘As I see it…Naturally’."

Molly creates beautiful, unique glass/mosaic lamps (table & standard), mirrors, lots of shapes & sizes, all "one off" pieces.

Julie has been painting for 23 years. She has won many awards. The theme for the GOAT gallery is the Wimmera and Mt Arapiles. All genre, impressionist, contemporary, etc.

Molly & I both have a style of our own, we are spontaneous, intuitive, impulsive,.. the work comes from emotions, locations and dreams. It's sort of a from here to there, a journey.

See Natimuk, Mount Arapiles and The Little Desert as never before. These unique ink on aluminium streetscapes will delight Natimuk residents and visitors alike.

“Vietnam, Fish & Chips, Italian Opera” [i]

As I was preparing for this exhibition, the above lyrics had regular airplay on the radio. Individually, each notion is not remarkable. However when grouped, the very disparateness creates an evocative impression that reminds me of the work I’ve been creating- seemingly unrelated images, albeit sitting together with ease.

An icon (from the Greek word eikon, “image”) is a representational image, picture or symbol.

Atop of most religious, cultural, political and economic structures, you will find an icon. A name, face, object or edifice that embodies the qualities of the organisation.

It occurs to me that icon’s may take on a life of their own, existing autonomously from their origins to take on new meanings for new audiences. They become larger than life, detached from previous associations to emerge with a new identity.

As well as portraying some classic icons (Jesus and Marilyn), I have also sought to create my own icons.
I worked in reverse by creating the image first and then applied meaning.

In search of subject matter and theme I turned to the resource of my visual diaries. A treasured library that I have built on for 17 years. Whilst looking through my books I noted that totems were a recurring motif. I don’t tend to draw totems in the primitive style; it is more what I refer to as stacked imagery- a tendency to vertically juxtapose incongruous images.

In an attempt to justify and make sense of the random overdose of imagery, I turned to Lao Tzu’s
‘Tao Te Ching’. Within this book I recalled references to ‘The Ten Thousands Things’, Lao’s analogy for nature and all it contains.

“Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed:
name’s the mother
of the ten thousand things.” [ii]

Christ is the eikon of God, the “image of the invisible God”.
 In the 15th century, theologian Jean Gerson wrote:

“And we ought thus to learn to transcend with our minds from these visible things to the invisible, from the corporeal to the spiritual. For this is the purpose of the image.” [iii]

References
(i) Lyrics, Cold War Kids
(ii) Le Guin (1997) Tao Te Ching, p.3
(iii) Ringbom (1969), p.165

During this time, Tsering asked me if I would paint the landscape where the monastery he belonged to was located - as I recall, a remote location in north-eastern Tibet, Tsering called this place "where there is two yellow river". Tsering showed me a series of photos that he had asked someone in Tibet to take and send to him in India. Tsering had already left Tibet journeying over the mountains, into Nepal and eventually into India. The photos may well have been taken out of Tibet with another person who was escaping over the mountains. Tsering expressed some concern regarding the fate of the site of the monastery.

Between the time of when Tsering asked me to paint his monastery landscape and the time of starting this project and, sometime time after the event, we heard that Tsering had died, committing suicide by hanging himself from a tree somewhere in or around Dharamsala. The trees in the area primarily consist of rhododendron and cedar and around Dharamsala, the rhododendrons are regularly stripped of foliage to feed domestic animals. The stark image remaining in my mind is of Tsering hanging from a stripped rhododendron tree from his monks robe. Higher up on the slopes, further from any villages, the rhododendrons grow large and are not harvested. It is uncertain where he died.

Foothills represents an initial response to these events."