Collection Title:
Roraima
Collection Context:
This collection of paintings is inspired by the Wild Roraima Gardens — a living dream, shaped over decades by one person’s vision. It’s a space overflowing with wild succulents, cacti, native orchids, and other remarkable plant life. Over time, the garden has evolved into something both documentary and deeply atmospheric. Drawn to the primeval, almost primitive feel of this extraordinary environment — a place where time seems suspended, and nature reclaims everything in her path — I have spent many hours documenting the wild plant life, through photography and sketches. It is a garden that I have visited on countless occasions in the search of inspiration.
The works in this collection explore the Jurassic character of Roraima's flora: towering, alien-like plants and a wildness that resists taming. The landscape envelopes you with a labyrinth of well-healed tracks where Nature feels unbound and elemental. On every visit I see more, look deeper at the plant life; like a symphony, the landscape is layered and beautifully being devoured by the plant life. The gardens are up for sale, and are noticeably being left to return to the earth. While natures wildness is encroaching, the gardens appear a little chaotic, but in this surrender lies a strange serenity. There is beauty in how the plants are slowly consuming everything. Roraima stands as a mecca for the unusual, where the bizarre and the beautiful coexist. Yet, despite its otherworldly qualities, there's something undeniably familiar and inviting — a sense of coming home to a place we’ve never been, but somehow always known. This collection captures not just a place in its physicality, but is also a homage to the magic of Roraima.
Roraima Gardens and Nursery is located in Lara, a regional town in Victoria, Australia. Artworks are photographed within the grounds of Roraima Gardens.
