Fire Time

I am interested in the threshold between domestic interiors and the expansive outdoor life that defines Central Australia and our relationship with fire. There I am surrounded by layered rocks of deep time that have been baking and burning for millennia. Its stark shadows illustrated by the uninterrupted light of the desert sun draw an abstracted landscape all around me. Now, dense fields of Buffel grass, an introduced species thrive in abundance after rain. When the growth dries, turning straw-yellow and brittle under the desert heat, I know fire time is near. The Buffel will burn and burn again as it loves fire. The country transitions, from golden tufts to a blackened shadow of itself, like a wrinkled skin of charcoal over the ancient rocks. Old gums are lost, and the tall stands of acacia are left as burnt sienna remnants.