While viewing the Bundanon Collection, I was particularly drawn to Lucy Boyd Beck’s landscapes for their absence of a horizon line—the meeting of land, water, sky and the presence of a position. 

Lucy’s coordinates and compositional techniques don’t locate the viewer, set an eye level, divide foreground and background, or use fade to create depth of field and distance. 

In an interview, Lucy says of her work, “My interest was in nature and the spirit…I really didn’t have the natural technique that Mary had but I was intuitive”. 

Unmarking the limit of the visible, removing the line that proposes something out of reach, allows the viewer to feel Lucy’s experience of a place that is full of feeling.

I have always thought of beading as a medium bound to the rigid properties of straight lines, and have worked compositionally within these parameters. However, encountering Lucy’s paintings inspired me to create my first work that uses a more intuitive and organic compositional approach. 

For this work I drew upon my time as a resident artist at Bundanon, when I was pregnant, and the ground was sometimes moving with black and brown snakes. There are motifs in this beading influenced by Lucy’s work: swirling forms, softly bent elbows, and patterns like a current in a river. I wanted to collapse perspective like Lucy and bring the viewer into close contact.