My work is based on a continued pre-occupation with the natural world. These works
are an ongoing series based on the display cases of entomologist Frederick
Parkhurst Dodd, 1861-1937. Dodd was an early collector from Kurandra, Queensland
Australia whose collections of moths, butterflies and beetles are housed in the
Queensland Museum. Dodd was inventive in the arrangement of specimens in some
of his presentation cases. In one such case small moths were used to construct text
from a poem by H.W Longfellow. The paintings are a result of this interest.
And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old nurse,
Who sang to him night and day
The rhymes of the universe.
And whenever the way seemed long
Or his heart began to fail,
She would sing a more wonderful song,
Or tell a more marvellous tale.
