On a visit to the South Coast of NSW after the summer bushfires, I became absorbed by the transformation of the landscape. On my return to Sydney I abandoned what I had been working on and began to explore the symphony of contrasts I had seen.

I was completely surprised at the amount of colour I encountered and the nature of the bush after the fire had passed. I had expected black everywhere but this was not the case. There were bursts of pure colour from the almost instant regrowth - the peeled bark, the bleeding gums, the leaves burnt orange, the scorched clay- and vertical strips of blue sky amidst the black trees.

In fact it is the blackness that isolates the colour - frames it, gives it is potency, amplifies it.

The distance where once was a curtain of scrub.
The space and vastness where once was density.
The clarity where once was chaos.
The resilience, the delicacy of scale.
The rhythms of a burnt landscape.

Henry Mulholland, April, 2002.