Burnt Ones, False Sightings - Derek March
Oil on canvas 1100 x 1810
My creative impulses over the years have led to me working in the fields of jewellery, painting and sculpture, featuring in numerous solo and group shows. My home studio is in Te Henga, I love living close to nature and my concern for the conservation of the natural environment is reflected in my work.
I have often thought I would have liked to have been born 150 years earlier in order to be able to experience this land when people moved at a pace which brought them closer to nature. Those were bird full days before the land was greatly transformed by the invasion of human settlement. One can only speculate as to how one would have viewed the feral world dwarfing and crowding in on one. I often ponder the question as to whether the bush would have been friend or foe to me in that context.
This collection of works, a feather on the ground reflects on avian extinction in Aotearoa. The feathers raining down symbolise the bird species lost down the years of human occupation. Huia were already uncommon when Europeans arrived and by the late 19th and early 20th centuries they had disappeared.
Thanks to Bill Manhire for allowing the last line of his poem Huia – a feather on the ground - to be used as title for this collection of works.
