The title: Out Damned Spot is drawn from the guilty words uttered by Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth while trying to remove guilty blood from her hands. As a New Zealand European, I am a hybrid of the lands of my ancestors and the country I was born into. Their reasons for being in this geographical location decided long before, yet today all introduced animals and native alike, must via for the same limited space alongside man’s ongoing ambitions; playgrounds, factories, leisure activities, roading, housing and all of the other scattered debris of modern living ~ and all are intertwined in a melee of contorted limbs and angles, each relying upon the other for survival.

The composition is circular although the painting is stretched onto a square frame which means that it can be hung from any side - there is no 'up' or 'down' in the work. The content is a spot or blemish, contrasted against the crisp whiteness of the background. The entwined flora and fauna depicted revolve around the central figure of the recently acclimatised White Faced Heron. All share a kindred history of human intervention through land development, consumerism and/or importation.

Read more and view closeup images of this painting in Works in a Series.