Description
Emily ten Raa, Colonised landscape 2: Imagining a pre-colonised landscape is futile but also useful 2024, oil on canvas, courtesy the artist.
Artist’s Statement:
My painting was inspired by Daniel Jan Martin?s map of the South West, which shows how much vegetation there might have been before European Colonisation. Although I cannot know what the land looked like then, it can be useful to imagine, as a starting point for making plans for a healthier and more protected ecosystem. Indigenous peoples had been modifying and caring for the land for around 60,000 years, and the land was perhaps a tapestry of managed grasslands, grazing lands, dense woodlands and forests. ?My composition is reminiscent of a traditional European landscape which acknowledges my European heritage as the origin of the degraded land that we inhabit today.
