This mixed media artwork was created in 2025 after a visit to the grass trees at Basin Reserve, Drysdale Victoria Australia. Their presence had a profound impact on the artist.
The grass trees in this work function as spiritual sentinels, clustering together in communion, embodying resilience, endurance and faith. Their sculptural crowns and rhythmic fronds are rendered with repeated, tactile marks that archive touch and time and glow as communal altars within the landscape.
A utilitarian power pole occupies the painting’s fulcrum and reads as a contemporary cruciform. Associated words to the Cross are used as detailed collage. As symbol, it negotiates multiple religious and spiritual meanings: a marker of faith, a sign of settlement and civilisation, and the growing impact of technology upon communities and our planet. Against a ritualised dusk of pinks, purples and gold, this vertical line both interrupts and anchors the scene.
The painting deliberately holds contradiction, inviting viewers to enact their own spiritual reading—seeing sacredness in the living landscape, unease in human intrusions, and hope in communal forms.
Through glazing, gestural mark-making, and sweeping colour, the painting invites viewers into a spiritual encounter with place—asking them to witness how religious symbol, ecological presence, and community interweave in moments of crisis and continuity.
To find out more about this artwork, visit Jacqueline Austin’s online gallery HERE:https://bluethumb.com.au/jacqueline-austin/Artwork/spiritual-resilience-0/
Place is Presence: Time Country Bible 
Leave a comment