As an artist I am intuitive, but first and foremost I am a very tactile creator, so initially, I thought this work was only about paper colour and form.

As a printmaker of 35 years, I had not printed for a few years when one of my precious pieces of 740-gsm paper blew off the deck and landed in our pond; where, unbeknown to me, it sat for five days. In printmaking we soak paper prior to printing, but not for so long. As I retrieved the paper I expected it to disintegrate but it didn’t, it endured the soaking well. I decided, rather than dry it out, I would place it on our driveway concrete strips. I covered it with an old print blanket. The ensuing rain and vehicles pushed the paper into the concrete. As well as rain moving the colour around, the paper endured the traffic with incredible strength and tenacity, absorbing the form of the driveway into its body. As I developed these pieces over the next few years I found all my knowledge of printmaking was flowing to this central point.

However, recently I have come to the realisation these works are not just about form and colour. These pieces are about myself. They are about my own reluctant endurance of the roads and scars life has left over my personal body. These pieces not only reflect the environment upon which they were created, they have absorbed my own body’s history; which started as an adolescent with emergency open-heart surgery. The next 30 years presented me with triple child loss, spinal surgery, broken bones too numerous to list and more recently, a brain bleed followed by intestinal cancer. Miraculously I am still here, which is why I call this show Road of Endurance.