FIRE-BORN MOODS (2025) applies instinctually creative practice to depict landscapes of personal significance. Over this three-year period of study, the landscapes of my backyard and the Dandenong Creek have taken over my creative subconscious. Townsend describes her similar experience as the pre-sense. I admire the wilderness, the curled branches and the light catching leaves and casting shadows. However, my feelings towards the landscape are contradictory, awe and comfort, but also vulnerability and danger. Like Townsend, I feel that these emotional responses are the ‘tip of an iceberg’ and that more complex associations are inaccessible and ‘below the surface’ (Townsend 2019). In this state of expanded consciousness I feel strongly that there is something to be created that corresponds with an inner experience. I want to understand what provokes my creative instincts and my desire to capture the essence of these overgrown bush landscapes.
To facilitate my creative practice I go walking along the creek. I take photos and videos, collect materials to take back to my studio and consider what can be discovered when thinking in creative collaboration with the landscape (Mayo 2013) I am interested in how through speed and relinquished focus, something unexpected and perhaps more authentic can materialize in the painting process. Additionally, ceramic elements are incorporated into Fire-born Moods. This includes a series of ceramic beads into which I press organic material collected from the creek. These beads preserve moments and draw attention to small details in the bushland that might otherwise be unnoticed or forgotten.
Amelie Stewart (b. 2004, Melbourne) is a visual artist working primarily in oil painting with an additional ceramics practice in sculptural and functional ware. She recently featured as part of the Art Activators group exhibition in association with Maroondah Arts and her creative practice draws inspiration from the Australian bush landscape, creative intuition and the art of walking.
