Thorned and Palmed

For five summers I returned to a sleepy village in central France, a place of rivers and endless sunflower fields. I first arrived in the aftermath of a separation, an ocean away from Australia, searching for solid ground. Thorned and Palmed became my therapy, translating grief and landscape into a visual poem of memory and new dreams.

The work moves between people and place: children swimming in rivers, gestures dissolving into water, trees standing like guardians, light flickering across stone and skin. The river became a place of transformation, where one learns to let go and be fully present.

To echo this impermanence, I paint shellac onto the prints. The liquid pools unpredictably, staining the photograph like time itself leaving its mark—allowing the image to absorb the heat, the river, the stillness, and above all, the light.

It's about returning, dwelling, listening, allowing a place to etch itself into you slowly, until it becomes inseparable from your own story.