Ditchwitch

96 x 137 cms 2011

Proceeds of Sale

I photographed the ditchwitch, on display at the Barossa Reservoir, several years ago but the painting itself only came to me very recently, the composition pressing into the right-hand side of the canvas, stopped dead by the front barrier of the ditchwitch, the bottom middle of the composition a mess of scribbly wire, cheerfully surmounted by the bunting and, to the left and behind all that, silence.

The parrot is a Murray Ringneck, the kangaroo skull was by the side of the road, together with the rest of his delicately curved, fragile skeleton and the tree is beside the Strathalbyn to Goolwa road, a rich source of that particularly distorted eucalypt.

Ditchwitch
Ditchwitch