Clare Brodie

'Pause-Breathe' Statement: Pause-Breathe is a series about taking a moment and being present. To live and flourish within our radically changing world we need time to process, to pause, to breathe. Recently I was able to retreat to a secluded property, backing onto the Yengo National Park, in the Hunter region. Time to witness this mercurial changing environment was balm for my soul and gave me much needed perspective. Armed with my water colours, Japanese sketch book and yoga mat - this was my time to retreat after a busy year. Early mornings started with a mystic white mist that engulfed the bush. As the sun rose it penetrated the trees with an intense golden light. Eventually the sky would break through and toggle between greys and blues, immersed and in awe of the cyclic nature of my surroundings I began my creative process , continuing a lifelong desire to link natural form and colour to the infinite. As Sufi Poet- Birago Diop, illuminates those links between the nature and the infinite…. “Those who are dead are never gone: They are there in the thickening shadow. The dead are not under the earth: they are in the trees that rustle, they are in the wood that groans, they are in the water that sleeps, they are in the hut, they are in the crowd, the dead are not dead.”