Project - Arid Lands
A series of works developed from extensive travels in Australian desert landscapes. The iron stained landscape, sculptured by eons and the holder of stories, ancient and new.
These are not grand landscapes, but moments in the landscape that moved me. To see open water again after 1000 dry kms, to smell the rain from a distant larikin storm. To stand on the same rock as someone else did 20,000 years ago, they themselves chipping in an image and an emotion.
A traveller must roll in the dust, drink from the water hole, feel the faintest dry dew on their predawn cheek. Draw the scented of air into their lungs and allow the night sky, the universe, to rest on the skin of their eyes
A traveller must also watch the mark of mankind before him, to imagine their journey, their joy, their despair. The stone chips of ancient industry the knot in the fence wire, the markers of their dead, their humour and humanity, their cruelness and carelessness. Some of it long buried is imagined, some discerned in faint marks, some great rusting hulks of engineering. All tells a story.
The landscape is a narrative of the forces of the natural world, the passing and endeavour of mankind and the patina of time. Every place has a story to tell.
Steve Baird Travel Journal #7 2008
A traveller must roll in the dust, drink from the water hole, feel the faintest dry dew on their predawn cheek. Draw the scented of air into their lungs and allow the night sky, the universe, to rest on the skin of their eyes
A traveller must also watch the mark of mankind before him, to imagine their journey, their joy, their despair. The stone chips of ancient industry the knot in the fence wire, the markers of their dead, their humour and humanity, their cruelness and carelessness. Some of it long buried is imagined, some discerned in faint marks, some great rusting hulks of engineering. All tells a story.
The landscape is a narrative of the forces of the natural world, the passing and endeavour of mankind and the patina of time. Every place has a story to tell.
Steve Baird Travel Journal #7 2008