MAREE KELLY
Maree is a landscape painter from Gunnedah in north-western NSW. She was born and raised in the bush and lives on a farming property just south of the village of Curlewis. Maree has been working on a series of paintings inspired by the vast and ancient Pilliga Scrub, an area of half a million wild acres of remnant semi-arid woodland that is currently under threat from coal seam gas development.
The Pilliga Scrub is an ancient and wild, semi-arid woodland covering more than 3,000 square kilometres in north-western NSW. Teeming with wildlife, this unusual remnant woodland is characterised by white and black cypress pine and ironbark forests. In the summer heat, the forest is dry with strongly contrasting light and shadows making it seem ominous and impenetrable. During wet times there are waterholes everywhere, and the forest floor is lush with greenery and covered in wildflowers.
For more than 18 months, I have been exploring the Pilliga Scrub, trying to understand and connect with an incredibly diverse landscape that covers more than half a million wild acres.
My work is based on my observance, understanding and connection to the natural environment and usually evolves from painting the landscape that surrounds me and what I am familiar with. I only had a vague knowledge of the area of ironbark and cypress pine forests, national parks and conservation areas that combine to make up the area broadly known as 'The Pilliga'. To create a new body of work, I set out to investigate this unfamiliar landscape to understand beter what makes this place so special.
It began as a personal journey, looking back at my family history and the connection to the area around the Pilliga. Many years ago, my great-grandmother was interviewed about her young life growing up on the edge of the Pilliga Scrub at a litle place called Cutabri, located between Wee Waa and the township of Pilliga. Born in 1901, she talked about her experiences as a young woman, born in a bark hut to an aboriginal mother; she spoke of floods, fires, bushrangers, wild horses, bush food and medicines, the people, and her life in the bush. I found it all so fascinating when I listened to the recordings many years later.
I have always been passionate about conservation and the environment. The recent approval of a coal seam gas project in the Pilliga and plans to drill 850 gas wells in this unusual semi-arid woodland deeply saddened me. This ancient and unique place teems with wildlife and is a biodiversity hotspot like no other. It feeds water into the Great Artesian Basin, an essential life support system for much of inland Australia.
I hope the paintings from the Pilliga series convey my joy in exploring the beauty and uniqueness of the forest - an ode to an incredible place that should be treasured and protected for generations to come.
Maree has tertiary qualifications in both environmental science and art, graduating from Newcastle University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2000. She previously worked as a teacher in Arts & Media with the New England Institute of TAFE at Tamworth and Gunnedah campuses teaching a variety of fine art subjects. She has also taught classes and workshops through the Gunnedah Community College.
In 2020 Maree was selected as a finalist in both the Paddington Art Prize and the Muswellbrook Art Prize. Most recently she was awarded the Major Prize for the 2023 Outback Archies
