Story of the Piece: Midnight Vines

The Daintree gets all the attention, but here in Far North Queensland the rainforest is everywhere. We have one five minutes down the street - Pete and I walk through it every day on the way to the dog park.

The moment you step under the canopy something changes. It's cooler. The air is heavier, earthier. The light drops. It smells and feels ancient. You are not where you were a second ago, you are somewhere else, somewhere older. The world above the canopy doesn't matter anymore.

Midnight Vines is that moment held still. Not the Daintree, not a postcard rainforest - the rainforest you walk through on the way to somewhere ordinary, and it stops you anyway.

Painted at night, in stillness. FNQ foliage — native philodendrons, palm leaves, ferns, vines crossing through. Finished in glass resin so the surface holds the light the way the canopy holds it — close, dark, alive.

A single 80 × 80cm piece. Framed. Built up in layers so the foliage sits proud of the black — you can almost walk into it.

The things that have lived get to live again — and become something that lives in another person's soul.