Artist/Gallery notes
In Europe the peach tree loses its leaves to avoid the cell bursting formation of ice. In Western Australia the tree's collective memory plays it tricks, for it loses its leaves in the mildest, wettest, most nutritious time of the year. When the orchard is bursting with tall grasses, wild flowers and masses of beautiful noxious weeds, the peach tree trusts its bare black twigs and branches upwards to fracture and fragment the coil capped clouds of the winter sky. Then there is a subtle change in those dormant dead sticks. To the experienced eye they become knobbly. The season of bud swell is upon us. The time of the golden yellow wattle is already well advanced, but bud swell leads to budburst and suddenly the orchard is filled with the pinks , reds and oranges of glorious peach blossom. At first there are no insects, but then the trees become alive with working bees and spinning spiders. The pink petals flutter to the ground leaving tiny fruitlets behind with a promise of sweet juicy Summer. Green tip shows. Spring is here!