It seems to me more and more universal.
A feeling that our inner compasses are spinning.
That we’re finding ourselves in places not named by the maps we’ve been given. We throw our palms up and say some version of “What on earth is going on? The map I have, does not reflect this terrain.”
“This place sucks and I feel lost.”

That the world has changed and continues to change is plain to see.
But it’s more than that.
It’s more than geopolitics and conflict.
It’s more than cost of living and price of consumption.
It’s more than oligarchs buying islands and space craft.
Enabled by their wringing out of the less capitally blessed.
Certainty is fragile.

I see inner compasses everywhere and every-who spinning.
Finding the location they’ve been adamantly instructed to seek, only to stand in a dystopian cemetery for lost dreams, misrepresented and mal-addressed.
Perhaps we’re recognising that the map is not only corrupt, but it was only ever a facsimile, a service station simplification surrounded by sponsors’ messages.

Perhaps in this moment we’re learning to navigate with what’s in front of us, and what’s inside us. Perhaps we’re collectively asking “What is true? What can I rely on?”

I say all this not to diminish the significant suffering I see.

Everyone is bracing, everyone is going through something.
I say it, because I see it. I see you, you’re not alone, and the suffering, it’s not your fault. It’s systemic. But most of all I want to say it because I want to tell you what gets me through.

You and I, staring at this screen.
We are the latest in the most incredible streak of success. Ancestor after ancestor survived long enough to procreate, and pass the gift of life on this magnificent planet. An unbroken chain, billions of years old.

The best of all, the patterns of survival our ancestors practised.
Are baked into our bodies and our nervous systems.
That spinning compass? It was never on the map, it was always within.
We don’t need a screen to know when we’re on the path and when we’re not. Our bodies know, our inner compass knows.

Finding A Way

A little over a year ago, I left a comment on a Substack post.
A comment that included a simple phrase that I coined without a lot of thought. Yet it turned out that phrase, would have a significant impact on the direction of my life.

The phrase that I used to describe the direction my own art practice was taking: “Nature-based Creativity”, piqued my curiosity. So I asked Perplexity to do a deep search around the phrase and see if there is any literature or research associated with the term. To my surprise there was a significant amount of research and a host of benefits.

Antonio Machado, a Spanish Poet, has a line for this:

“se hace camino al andar“ (You make your way by walking).

The research didn’t set my direction. It confirmed the one my body had already chosen, years before my Perplexity search found the language.
The walking itself was the knowing.

So what is Nature-based Creativity?

Most of us know by now that nature immersion is good for us. It’s good for our bodies, our brains, and our nervous systems. The research is deep and the benefits are real.

Most of us have also heard of art therapy. You’ve likely heard that a creative practice eases stress, supports brain health, and restores our general sense of wellbeing.

Nature-based Creativity braids the two together.

It uses creativity to deepen our relationship with nature. And by making in collaboration with nature, creativity becomes wonderfully accessible, beneficial and rewarding. Making art in relationship with country, rather than observing it from the outside.

I can tell you what the research says. But I’d rather tell you what I’ve seen.

The past twelve months have been trying. Not just for me, for everyone around me. This practice has helped me regulate my nervous system, manage my ADHD, and sleep. And in my workshops I’ve watched it do small miracles for others. I’ve watched people meet a phobia and soften it. I’ve watched people come home to their own bodies and feel safe there. I’ve watched creative practices ignite, and reignite after decades of silence.

And here is the thing the research kept revealing to me. It was confirming what my body has always known.

There is an ancient operating system in each of us. It is recovered the moment we enter into good relationship with the earth, the elements, and the more-than-human world. It is millions of years old. It is your compass. And it is there in your body, waiting, the way the parched soil waits for rain.

You were never lost. You were just following the map we were given. And the terrain, the earth, the ancestors, they have been waiting hundreds, thousands, millions of years to show us the way home.

If you’re new here, welcome. Perhaps something in you is turning toward the living world, or toward your own creativity, or both. I care about that turning. Tending it is what allows me to make sense of the world. Your connection with the earth, your creative life, your way home to the more-than-human world. I’m here for that, and for you.

If you’re curious about nature-based creativity, leave me a comment. Ask me a question, or tell me what stood out to you when you invited nature and creativity to coalesce.

This week, reminded me that every crisis carries curriculum, every poem holds a prayer, and every creature knows something about abundance we've forgotten. From a bird that sang healing into my despair, to bees that dance directions to sweetness, nature kept whispering the same secret: you're never alone, and your gifts matter more than you know.

the birds: Wonga Pigeon

Deep in that delicious sleeping state, came the sound of a waterfall.

Somewhere, deep in dreaming, I knew this was not the time for sleep. But this particular sleep was well earnt and keenly anticipated. After the busyness of moving my young family, 650 kilometres south (from Monto, Qld to Bangalow, NSW) deep sleep was all we wanted and needed.

Yet a torrent of water was making itself difficult to ignore.

The decision to move, from our home town to Bangalow, felt like right one. Our path seemed supported on all sides. The house hunt was just that, a hunt. The Byron Bay region was known to First Nations people as “Cavanbah” which translates approximately to “meeting place”.

It’s a dynamic area that draws people to it like a magnet, finding accommodation can be a competitive sport.

Wright Place, Right Time

During the house hunt, we kept saying "we just needed to find the right place”. And find it we did, in a street rather serendipitously called “Wright Place”. Spending our first night together in Bangalow, was a milestone. However a raging waterfall was unanticipated and in that sweet slumber, unwanted.

Stumbling down the hall from the bedroom, I walked towards the ominous sound.

With each step, attempting to gather a little more waking reality in an unfamiliar house. In a shock of waking consciousness, I noticed like a boat steaming out of the harbour, a wake preceded me. I was walking in water, our new hallway was full of it and the water was getting deeper.

In the kitchen now, as I passed the lounge room, water was everywhere, almost ankle deep.

I opened the door to the laundry, and found the source. The pressure of the Bangalow water mains had blown the hoses off our washing machine and pumped 100’s of litres of water through the house.

Ruined on the First Night

The terror set in. Fully awake, I tried desperately to rid our home of water.

Four children remained sleeping, as Michelle (the mother of my children) and I tried mops, towels, squeegees, anything we could think of to get water off the floating bamboo flooring.

All I could think of was the $10,000’s of damage that the water was inevitably doing to the house we had just rented. I felt quite certain, I was ruined on the first night. We would be heading back to Monto with our tails between our legs.

A couple of hours into the cleanup efforts. Emotionally destroyed, I lay on a bed in the spare room and passed out.

A Blessing from the Birds

After what seemed like 10 mins, but what was most likely 2 hours. Once again I was lifted from my exhaustion by another curious sound.

Eyes still closed, I heard a sound I’d never heard before. The most beautiful and soothing sound, like a gentle choir of angels. A salve for my janky nervous system, yet in that moment, still not knowing the source.

Amongst such heightened emotions, I felt a wonderful sense of calm and affirmation.

Hope from the Afterlife

Opening my eyes cautiously, I could just make out a ball of feathers on the window sill.

In the morning's first light, oscillating between silence and the sound of heaven. The bird became a quivering ball of sound. Such a beautiful sight after the disaster of the night before and the cleanup that was about to start.

Still grieving the loss of my mother, I couldn’t help but feel that if anyone would choose a bird as a messenger from the afterlife. It would be Mum (Moyra). She collected feathers and kept them as keep sakes on dressers, on sideboards, in her car and always in the band of her hat. She loved birds and like her parents before her, fed birds daily.

Faith Restored

Whether the soothing bird song or the memory of the first home maker I had ever known.

The pigeon brought comfort and perhaps a sign of things to come. Sweet relief came around 9am that morning when our new landlord called. The first words I heard were: "I don't want you to worry about a thing. This is what insurance is for. You pay the excess, and the insurance company will take care of the rest."

So began a new chapter of life, a sign that we were in a new place. Where the ways of living we had known may not serve us as they once had, but we were supported

Getting To Know The Wonga Pigeon

That was my first conscious encounter with a Wonga Pigeon.

Thier range suggests I might have seen one in Central QLD, however I don't recall seeing them previous to moving to Byron Bay. I've come to know them as a portly scrub-dwelling bird with a beautiful call. They amuse me as they potter around, I can't help but picture them wearing a top hat and a waistcoat.

The Soothing Science behind the Song of Support

Whenever I have an encounter with nature that has meaning beyond the senses, I like to check the science.

Here's what I've since found out. Pigeons like humans, possess fully developed limbic systems which allow them to experience and respond to humans' emotional states. Birds can detect human stress through facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, and energy levels. In fact, this ability gives them the possibility of responding to our stress before we even fully process it.

Birds have been shown to respond to human sadness with comforting behaviours.

Wonga Pigeons are relatively sedentary, they develop strong territorial bonds to "thier patch". You could say they have a strong sense of "home". They mate for life and demonstrate strong family bonds.

“The story of the wonga pigeon teaches us about strength, about healing and regeneration, and about the enduring love between wonga pigeons, who mate for life.” Dr Jodi Edwards, Dharawal Woman.

In many traditions Pigeons are seen as messengers between the spiritual realm and the material world.

While I understood none of this lore or science that the time this encounter unfolded. That visit from the Wonga Pigeon was a source of strenght over the years. This tale would be incomplete if I didn't share, that during the writing of this piece I walked out onto my deck (now Koonyum Range) 17 kilometres as the Wonga Pigeon flies from Bangalow.

And there I saw walking on the grass, a Wonga Pigeon. Perhaps I can say, "the Wonga Pigeon" approves this message.

the birds: is a series of essays about birds that have inspired my life and art

01 Splendid Fairy Wren | 02 Kookaburra | 03 Spoonbill | 04 Wonga Pigeon | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09

Poetry: BlackOut Poems

people will trample on

revered and feared

in a kind of ecstasy.

the gods answered in

the stars and the earth.

The Dance Of The Honey Bee

Nature is always sharing information, collecting information, and storing information. Trees write the history of seasons and of place, they keep it in rings of wood.

When Nature Speaks, Everything Changes

From flooded hallways to dancing bees, nature never stops show us how to live elegantly.

The Wonga Pigeon reminded me that comfort comes when we're ready to receive it. The blackout poems revealed that even in chaos, sacred messages emerge. The honeybees showed us that sharing our discoveries multiplies abundance for everyone.

Perhaps the deepest art we can practice is simply learning to listen, because when nature speaks, it's always calling us home to who we really are.

It's difficult to remember a time when suffering was more widespread or of greater magnitude. In times of darkness, we reach for hope and we lean on the faith that something more beautiful is yet to come.

Why Creative Courage Matters More Than Ever

You likely know CS Lewis for his children’s book series “The Chronicles of Narnia". Like me, you might have also seen his quotes about war circulating on social media recently:

"If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things: praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs."

But there's something remarkable about Lewis that most people don't know.

CS Lewis: The Wartime Creative

While horrified by war (having been wounded serving in WWI), Lewis rallied to support his countrymen during WWII's darkest hours. Beyond holding his Oxford professorship, he simultaneously served in the Home Guard, conducted BBC radio broadcasts during air raids, became the first President of the Oxford Socratic Club, and visited RAF stations on summer weekends to boost troop morale.

Here's the extraordinary part: Lewis's creative output during the war years represented a 630% increase in productivity compared to his normal pace. He published 11 major works in 6 years while bombs fell on London, transforming from respected academic into the voice of faith for an embattled nation.

• Pre-War Period (1919-1938): 5 works over 20 years

• War Period (1939-1945): 11 works over 7 years

• Post-War Period (1947-1961): 17 works over 15 years

Sari Shryack: Art as Cultural X-Ray Vision

While deep in my CS Lewis research, I came across a Threads post by Sari Shryack that perfectly captured what I was discovering. The Austin-based artist and art teacher had been reading JF Martel's book "Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice" and reflecting on art's role during difficult times:

This quote is Sari’s monologue from the video:

"There's a great Groucho Marx quote that says 'I'm not crazy about reality, but it's still the only place to get a decent meal.' This quote often makes me think about the relationship between art and reality. When the world feels like it's burning, art can seem like an escape at its best, a place for people to catch their breath, and at its worst, an ostrich sticking its head in the sand. But I think this does a disservice to the truth that art can reveal. It gives us a wider lens, almost like x-ray vision, into the heart of culture, its values, and contradictions... I suspect that it's at times that art feels the most small and indulgent is exactly when we need it the most."

JF Martel: Art as Vital Defense

Inspired by Shryack's post, I dove into Martel's book. His argument is compelling: authentic art is necessary to push back against our world saturated by consumerism, artificiality, and mass media. True art "disrupts the ordinary, opening a 'rift' in our perception and revealing new ways of being." Martel positions art as vital defense against manipulative forces, not escape from reality, but deeper engagement with what's real.

Art As Antidote

In our current environment, art isn't distraction. It's the antidote. When the world feels like it's burning, creativity becomes both refuge and resistance, both personal medicine and collective healing.

the birds: Royal Spoonbill

Spoonbills follow water, which makes perfect sense, their natural habitat is wetlands.

Here's the surprising part, they don't migrate based on actual rainfall. Instead, these magnificent waterbirds detect changes in barometric pressure thousands of kilometres away. Flying on faith that rain is coming and soon the runoff will soon create wetlands bustling with life.

The enigmatic nature of Spoonbills doesn’t end there.

Their distinctive spoon-shaped beaks allow them to feed on faith too. Wading in wetland margins, in murky water with bills oscillating side to side, seeking nutrition they can't see, but feel through specialised nerve endings. Using tiny sensors (Herbst corpuscles) in their bills, spoonbills detect pressure changes as tiny as 0.001 mm of water displacement, a sign they've found sustenance.

Spoonbills live in community, beginning their feeding process spread out to improve the possibility that one of the flock will find a meal.

When seeking food, their dance-like motion sweeps at 20+ times per minute. But when they discover abundance, their dance slows to 12-15 sweeps per minute, signalling to other spoonbills that they've found a rich vein of food. The flock comes together to feed as a group.

I've always thought of wetlands as temporary autonomous zones like a rave or a “bush door” where all kinds of organisms bloom in celebration of life.

Royal Spoonbills (Platalea Regia) serve as umbrella species for wetland conservation. They are living barometers of hydrological health, their presence, an indicator of thriving aquatic food webs and their absence signalling ecosystem stress.

Spoonbills As A Symbol Of Community Health

In 2001, my hometown of Monto in Queensland, was suffering from dairy industry deregulation and new regional forestry agreements.

Two of our most significant industries were severely impacted. Our dairy factory closed, workers were laid off, and as we began questioning our identity: "Are we still a dairy town?”, “Should we still celebrate our Dairy Festival?”

In response, I proposed a public art project to our local government and community to reinforce the timeless elements of our rural community. After council approval, I was commissioned to create a 5-metre metal spoonbill sculpture. During a cultural mapping exercise, the community identified our regionally significant ephemeral wetlands, natural festivals celebrating the abundance of bird life, including the arrival of spoonbills. I choose the Spoonbill because to me it represented the abundant life-force that persisted beyond the whims of government and industry.

Little did I realise at that time that the Spoonbill was such a perfect metaphor for having faith that nourishment would come and that our community would come together to strengthen the health of our district.

Spoonbill Sculpture Project Outcome Booklet

Rather fittingly, after the public opening of the sculpture, Monto experienced a period of somewhat unseasonal and much-needed rainfall.

the birds: is a series of essays about birds that have inspired my life and art

01 Splendid Fairy Wren | 02 Kookaburra | 03 Spoonbill | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09

How To Create When You're In Sticky Emotions

Feeling creatively stuck is completely normal, it's as natural as the urge to create itself.

In any creatively lived life, feeling stuck will happen repeatedly. Often in times of stress and unexpected change. But here's the gift: it's a moment to be grateful for having creativity at all. When emotions overwhelm us because of things beyond our control, creativity brings us back to something we do have control over: what we create.

Here's a process I've found helpful:

1. Start with gratitude

I journal gratitude by hand, because handwriting activates neural pathways in ways that thinking alone or typing cannot. This simple act shifts your brain from fight-or-flight into creative receptivity. Start with the simple enquiry what am I grateful for? This will be your first act of creativity, however it’s really just primping the pump.

2. What's one small step?

If you have a creative project in progress, ask: "What's the smallest step I can take to move this forward?"

If it's a painting, maybe clean your brushes. If it's sewing, pull patterns from your drawer or thread a needle. Maybe you have a half-finished project gathering dust. Pull those pieces out, dust them off, and figure out the next tiny step.

If you don't have a project, start the smallest, simplest thing possible. Doodle on old envelopes. Draw whatever's on your kitchen table. Start free-writing. Anything that gets your hands moving.

I like to say: "When my hands start moving, the muse appears."

3. Celebrate that shift

Just like the Spoonbill starts dancing when it finds food, express gratitude for the creative shift you feel happening. You don’t need to throw a dinner party (but you can), simply recognising the change that you’re feeling is the key. If you make part of your celebration sharing with others. Then like the Spoonbills, your good is shared with your community.

Journal Prompts:

1. I feel grateful for... (write at least 4 things, keep going if you're on a roll)

2. What's the smallest step I can take on a creative project? (list at least 3, pick the easiest)

Poetry: What If?

“What if you slept?

And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed?

And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower?

And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand?

Ah, what then?”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge - from his unpublished Notebook Entry

Connection Heals

A heart that holds only hate and fear grows isolated. But love, even small acts of it, creates connection that can bear us through the heaviest times.

Having had the privilege of working in Natural Resource Management I have seen ecosystems respond to connectivity. You may have experienced this in your own life, when we before isolated from the good people around us, well-being begins to suffer. We humans heal the way nature heals through connection and creativity.

Create And Connect

This has been a trying week, personally and collectively. This might be the hardest newsletter I've had to write. But the creative act of writing this edition has reminded me of CS Lewis and his extraordinary response to the suffering he witnessed around him. The spoonbill reminded me that it's natural to have faith that a more beautiful world exists if we all come together and create it.

Our creative courage isn't about waiting for better times—it's available to us right now to create beauty when what we see around us feels ugly.

Finally, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's transcendent dreaming asks: "What if?"

What kind of world can we create when we have the courage to lean into the field of possibility?

I care about your connection to nature because our planet depends on it, and your curiosity because our most authentic gifts depend upon it. We can't heal our way out of what's broken in the world, but we can heal our way into something more beautiful. This week's edition explores how creativity isn't just personal medicine, it's collective rebellion and rebuilding. An earthling remembrance, and the pathway to making meaning for a world that's forgotten how to craft life rather than endure it.

the birds: kookaburra

In documented Australian First Nations mythology, the kookaburra calls for the sun to bring daylight to the world and restore us from darkness. Perhaps this is why their famous call sounds uncannily like human laughter, pure joy at summoning light.

These charismatic birds can often be seen tossing food in the air and engaging in mock fights with their siblings. Their calls mark family territory, echoing in chorus at dawn and dusk. My grandparents would feed raw mince to their pet kookaburras, while my uncle claimed that if they called between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., it was going to rain. Outside those hours, you could bank on a rain-free day.

What strikes me about kookaburras is their unwavering commitment to their purpose, calling for light whether anyone is listening or not. They don't question their role as dawn-bringers; they simply show up and laugh the world awake.

Natural Born Creatives

Every creature on Earth creates beauty without asking permission - except us.

"Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it." - Sigmund Freud

Have you ever wondered at a spider's web? Been taken aback by its intricacy, the way dew drops hang on that silky web in early morning light? Have you ever seen a web and thought, "That's a bit rough around the edges"? Of course not, nature always communicates with beauty.

Since the industrial revolution, we've been obsessed with productivity. We've learned to view subsistence as lacking in sophistication. When we consider making space for creativity, that programming dismisses our creative urges as pointless, as lacking productivity. We don't have to look far to recognize that beauty-making is far more natural than widget-making.

The ocean doesn't judge the whale's artistry, and the earth isn't judging yours.

Bearing Witness To Beauty

We've all felt the affirmation that comes from being seen. As children we want our family to notice us, as teenagers it's our peers, as we get older it's partners, colleagues, friends. But here's what's beautiful: when we bear witness, it's a gift flowing in two directions: to what we're witnessing and back into ourselves.

When we witness beauty, we fill our own cups while nourishing that which we see.

This practice becomes radical in a world obsessed with productivity and overwhelmed with suffering. To pause and truly see the curve of a cloud, the way light catches water, the determined growth of a weed through concrete. It’s creative rebellion. It's training our hearts to find what's worth growing.

Regardless of how chaotic the world feels, beauty persists. Our witnessing becomes both refuge and resistance. Joy flowing inward through gratitude, outward through recognition.

Poetry: Basho’s Frogs Became Olsen’s Inspiration

I have the late John Olsen to thank for introducing me to Basho. Olsen, considered by many, including me, to be Australia's greatest painter. He became celebrated for his frog paintings and prints, some of them directly referencing the Japanese poet. The watercolour sketch above should probably be titled something like “Frog in an ancient silent pond, after Olsen, after Basho”. It’s a rapid tribute to the Olsen’s loose and lyrical frogs in the absence of a image from the great man on account of not finding an image of one of his frogs in the public domain. I’m sure a quick google search of “John Olsen Frogs” will find you plenty of amphibians.

Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) a master of haiku, whose evocative works transformed the form into a respected art and captured the beauty and impermanence of nature. He was born to a samurai family, Bashō left that life to pursue poetry, and his influence continues to shape Japanese literature today. One of his haikus was a favourite of Olsen’s and I love it too.

An old silent pond...
A frog jumps into the pond,
splash! Silence again.

The original was of course written in Japanese

古池や
蛙飛びこむ
水の音
(Furu ike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto)

The ability of Basho and Olsen to transport us into nature in a presence that is both momentary and ancient. It captures something of the dichotomy of living moment to moment in the eternal story of the earth.

Healing Inside A Trojan Horse

Today, I’m 9 weeks into recovery.

Recovery from another burnout, I'm finally asking the right question: Am I cultivating creativity in service of empire or evolution?

When a walk around my dining table descended into excruciating pain, I had no clue what would follow. Three weeks lying flat, unable to sit, and standing or hobbling on my "one good leg". It forced me to stop and evaluate what brought me here. My recovery was slow and steady until week six, when I regressed rapidly. Almost as if I was being shown: you're rebuilding the exact same life that brought you here, destined to repeat the same mistakes.

This burnout was my nervous system disguised as a lumbar spine injury, a Trojan horse revealing deeper patterns.

While conscious creativity has healed me through many cycles before, this time I'm rebuilding not from fear of commercial solvency but from love of meaning, guided by curiosity toward contribution that exists beyond a world that eats itself.

I'm thinking of all the times I felt stuck preparing exhibitions to pay bills rather than painting love poems to the earth. All the marketing roles where I burnt out capturing market share instead of being energized by muse-inspired mindshare.

The question isn't whether to create; it's whether our creativity serves the systems that exhaust us or the evolution that calls us home.

Beyond Personal Healing

Our individual journeys can feel consuming, epic, sometimes overwhelming. It's comforting to realise that our stories are happening inside the most magnificent, magical story of all; life on Earth.

Living in 2025 means navigating systems that no longer serve us. But just like the kookaburra calling in the darkness, creativity is calling us home to remember who we are and contribute to birthing a world kinder to humanity and kinder to the planet.

My invitation is simple: make something beautiful this week and witness something beautiful. It doesn't have to be huge, in fact, it's easier to start with the smallest possible step.

Every beautiful thing you make isn't just personal healing, it's the planet dreaming through you.

That the fairy wren outside your window is delivering messages your screen-addled brain can't decode? That somewhere between your seventh hour of scrolling today and that notebook gathering dust on your nightstand, lies the difference between a creative life and watching it slip away. One notification at a time.

This week, we're staging a quiet rebellion against the forces that profit from your fragmentation.

Where Is My Mind?

When the Pixies sang "where is my mind?" first the very first, they couldn't have imagined this particular moment on our planet. But it could well be an anthem for this age.

Your creative mind is under siege. Seven hours of daily screen time (the global average) isn't just stealing your day, it's rewiring your brain. Here's what's happening while you scroll:

• Your cerebral cortex is thinning — that's your memory and decision-making headquarters

• Gray matter is shrinking — goodbye emotional regulation and smooth movement

• Dopamine is crashing — hello restless craving for the next digital hit

• Dementia risk is climbing — 5+ screen hours daily significantly raise your odds

South Africans are the global winners coming in just over 9 hours daily. Americans hit 7 hours 3 minutes. Your nervous system is drowning, making it nearly impossible to recognize that creative spark trying to break through the noise.

The Answer Isn't Digital Detox

Let's be real, screens aren't disappearing. They connect us to infinite knowledge, community, and creativity. The answer isn't digital abstinence; it's intentional balance.

Research shows stepping away from screens for just two weeks improves mental health equivalent to being 10 years younger. Who wouldn’t want to trade place with themselves 10 years ago? I've experienced a new level of clarity firsthand. Bookending my digital day with analog rituals, giving my brain predictable breaks from relentless stimulation.

Creativity Needs Space to Breathe

Your fragmented digital life rarely provides the spaciousness creativity demands. When you engage in analog activities:

• writing by hand,

• drawing or doodling

• crafting and collaging,

different neural pathways activate, fostering deeper thinking. Your brain, no longer hijacked by notifications, can finally hear itself think.

Journaling by hand is particularly powerful because it combines analog benefits with cognitive reflection. It creates mental space for original thought while building connections between ideas over time, the very skill digital consumption erodes.

Your Creative Rebellion Starts Small

You don't need to become a digital hermit. Start here:

• Bookend your day analog — mornings and evenings screen-free

• Keep a notebook handy — catch those transient ideas as they drop in

• Begin with gratitude when nothing comes to mind

• Index your insights — there's gold in your archive

These aren't productivity hacks. They're acts of neurological rebellion that help you think like a human again, and reclaim your creative mind.

the birds: The Splendid Fairy Wren

I threw a Coming Out Party for myself recently, and invited the whole Substack Community.

I can’t say how long I’ve been a closet Bird Lover, but the signs have been there for a long time. An accumulation of the “tools of the trade”; my grandfather’s binoculars, a growing library of Bird ID books and a sharping of my ear to birdsong. Anyhow, (bad) dad jokes aside, I am celebrating by sharing some of my bird pieces.

Today’s feature is a collage of a Splendid fairy-wren (Malurus cyaneus), made from scraps of my watercolour paintings in 2020.

These small Australian Natives (13–15 cm long & 7.5–11.5 grams) are quite flashy in their breeding habits. The males outside breeding season, look similar to females with brownish feathers. However they lay on the charm when they’re looking to get lucky.

Step 1: Dress To Impress - The blue feathers of breeding males are highly iridescent and reflect ultraviolet light. Fortunately the vision of Fairy Wrens extends into the UV spectrum, the extravagance isn’t wasted.

Step 2: Bringing The Gifts - Males perform a unique courtship ritual by plucking pink or purple petals and presenting them to females to impress them.

When they do mate, they’re well… fluid. Splendid fairy-wrens are socially monogamous but sexually promiscuous. Pairs form bonds, but both males and females often mate with others, recruiting helpers assist in raising chicks from their dalliances.

This all new information to me. I know them as busy little birds, bouncing and hopping around, feeding and twittering restlessly. There is a reason for me choosing the Splendid fairy-wren for this feature. The morning after my Bird Lover coming out, three little birds (just like the Bob Marley song) popped onto the railing of my bathroom, bounced and twittered as if to say “well done” and then left.

Random event? I think not, have you every had a synchronous bird encounter? I’d love to heard about in the comments.

The Book That Threw Itself At My Feet

In the dying days of last century, before Audible or podcasts, Radio National was my studio companion. A national broadcaster whose programming of arts, culture, and social issues made perfect background for creative work.

That's how I first heard about Bruce Chatwin and his controversial book "The Songlines." Radio National featured it as book of the week with several readings. I added the title to my "Must Read" list, particularly curious about songlines and First Nations culture myself.

A month or two later, during a trip to Brisbane, I visited my favourite bookstore, Bent Books in West End. It's still the most beautifully curated second-hand bookstore I've ever found. With no real agenda beyond browsing, I'd forgotten about my Must Read list and "The Songlines." Perhaps if I'd checked my Moleskine notebook (this will be important later), I would have found it listed there.

As I pushed open the red wooden door, a book plummeted from an eye-level shelf, crashing onto the carpet centimetres from my feet. Mildly embarrassed in that hushed environment, I quickly picked it up. Turning it over to see the cover took my breath away. It was of course "The Songlines." Not only as this title I’d been looking; it seems the book wanted to come home with me too.

The Enigmatic Mr Chatwin

Bruce Chatwin was a former Sotheby's art expert, something that instantly fascinated me about him. He left the art trade to become a celebrated author who redefined travel literature, blending autobiography, anthropology, and fiction.

An avid traveller obsessed with the human urge to wander and belong, "The Songlines" follows Chatwin's attempt to unravel Aboriginal creation myths and the deep connection between landscape, language, and identity in Australia's heartland. A meandering meditation on belonging, a beautiful combination of art, earth and consciousness itself.

The Moleskine Connection

I told you this would be important. Although I had a Moleskin with me that day in Bent Books, I had no idea Chatwin was directly credited with the resurrection of the Moleskine notebook.

In "The Songlines," he described his beloved black oilcloth-bound "carnets moleskines" from Paris. as essential to his writing process. When he learned the French manufacturer was closing in 1986, he tried to buy up all remaining stock.

His mention of "moleskine" was the first time the name appeared in print, directly inspiring the modern Moleskine company founded in 1997.

The Controversy

"The Songlines" faced significant criticism for its extractive approach to Indigenous culture.

Many scholars and readers argue that Chatwin appropriated and romanticised First Nations beliefs without giving proper voice or agency to the people themselves. His blending of fact, fiction, and personal myth has led to accusations of misrepresentation and epistemic violence. Raising important questions about the ethics of writing about marginalised cultures.

Would I Read It Again?

As a matter of fact, I have many times. I still own that same copy that I found in West End all those years ago.

While the book gave me deeper insight into Indigenous culture, its controversy created a deeper awareness of the inherent extractive mindset of colonisation. Chatwin's prose, like his life, is peripatetic, exciting, rich and sometimes hard to follow. He was definitely a man who believed in the old adage: "Don’t let anything stand in the way of a good story."

The synchronicity of that moment in Bent Books still moves me. Perhaps books choose us as much as we choose them, and sometimes the universe conspires to place exactly what we need directly at our feet.

Poetry: Words That Breathe

Poetry has a way of cracking us open to truth we didn't know we carried. It awakens our wild, sensual side that remembers we are nature itself embodied. Here's a sensual poem I wrote sometime ago, any resemblance to your own midnight musings is purely intentional.

eros manifest

she danced nude,

naked in every sense of that word

baring everything to the mountain and the moon.

turned on by life itself. she was

eros manifest

Perhaps the deepest truth hiding in these stories is that we are nature having a human experience, not humans trying to connect with nature.

The Splendid fairy-wren's iridescent courtship dance, the Aboriginal songlines mapping sacred country, a hand moving across paper in a quiet morning ritual. There are all the same creative force expressing itself through different forms.

Your creative practice isn't self-improvement; it's world healing.

Your body replaces every cell every seven years.

Mountains shift atom by atom.

Even your morning coffee cup vibrates with invisible energy. We live in a world of constant renewal disguised as stillness."

If A New World Is Born Everyday, Let’s Make It More Beautiful Tomorrow

Both you and the world around you are constantly being renewed.

Your body continuously creates new cells while retiring old ones. Your stomach lining completely regenerates every 3-5 days, your skin every 2-4 weeks. Every cell in your entire body is replaced approximately every 7 years. Even that seemingly solid mountain, you admire on your morning walk is buzzing with invisible activity. Electrons dance an atomic tango between different energy levels billions of times per second.

The world you woke up in this morning is literally not the same one you went to sleep in.

Poem

I wrote this tiny poem days before Cyclone Alfred arrived. Inspired by witnessing a real leaf gently oscillating in what seemed like no breeze at all. How prophetic the leaf turned out to be. (Cyclone Alfred brought 100’s of mm’s of rain, flooding and peak winds of 165km/h).

From The Studio

I heard a quote recently from Zach Bush, a brilliant man who bridges the worlds of medicine, environment and agriculture.

“We are not made of cells, we are made of stories.” Zach Bush MD

He thinks like a scientist and speaks like a poet.

It got me thinking about nature. A world we understand is made of cells, and minerals and elements. And also, nature is full of knowledge systems, ecosystems are teeming with information shared between organism. The rings of a tree are journal entries recorded daily reflecting the seasons, the climate and conditions. The colour of a flower, the note of a birdsong, the signal sent through a mycelium network. They’re all telling stories.

To channel the good Dr Bush, Landscape is not made of minerals and organisms, it’s made of stories.

For the last 3 years I’ve been painting about Koonyum Range and the Tweed Shield Caldera. Inspired by living on the side of Koonyum and by the ecological abundance of the Caldera.

One night, while creating sketchbook studies. I realised if I used newspaper from the villages in the Caldera I could collage actual stories of the place into my paintings. Making the metaphor literal.

Of course, as is my practice I used;

• Charcoal I’d created from the landscape I was painting.

• Water I’d collected from streams running down the rim of the caldera.

• And ritual to connect me to the place I was painting.

“caldera: landscape is made of stories 046” is one of many studies using this idea. My painting shelves currently host a range of village newsletters from Murwillumbah to Nimbin and Bangalow. So you’re likely to see more of these.

A lovely unintended parallel that occurred to me after collaging newspaper into my work for a couple weeks. Was the collages of Kurt Schwitters.

If you’re not familiar with Schwitters, he’s quite a character. A German artist, Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) pioneered the use of everyday materials like newspaper clippings, tickets, and fabric scraps in his revolutionary collages and assemblages. A key figure in the Dada movement, he developed his own artistic philosophy called "Merz," transforming discarded urban detritus into groundbreaking works of modern art.

A Never Ending Story

Our world rewrites itself.

A tree falls in the forest and becomes food for fungi who feed minerals to the next tree. That tree becomes a newspaper, the newspaper becomes a collage that tells a new story. Tomorrow’s beauty isn’t something we wait for, it’s something we become.

• through the crumbling art world,

• into the living soil,

• and beneath the stories we tell ourselves.

Each one revealed something vital: a hidden architecture shaping creativity, our ecosystems, and our becoming.

Creativity As An Antidote

As AI spreads and the digital scroll accelerates, art risks becoming a dopamine-delivery system.

Have we hit peak screen time yet? In a piece I wrote earlier in the week, The Art World As We Know It Is Dying. I unpack how modern tools have reshaped our experience of art. While it’s not all bad, we have traded pilgrimage for performance, communion for content.

The antidote isn’t rejection.

It’s remembering. Honouring the Muse. Reclaiming handmade magic. Creativity takes many forms, at it’s best it touches the cosmic. So many times in my creative career, I’ve been overcome by the feeling that I’m witnessing a non local muse take over in the process of painting or writing. It’s my hand that is moving but the inspiration moving it is from somewhere else.

The post ends with 8 gently powerful ways to reignite your own creative spark, whether you’re just starting or returning after a pause.

👉 Read “The Art World As We Know It Is Dying”

The Ancient Intelligence Beneath Our Feet

Before forests, before roots, before even plants, there were fungi.

In a post called The Hidden Kingdom That Made Life on Earth Possible, I share a glimpse of this underworld wisdom. A kingdom that made terrestrial life viable, that cleans, stores, and heals the earth still today. Did you know fungi predated terrestrial plants by 500, 000,000 years? Talk about domain knowledge.

This one’s for the earth-lovers, the barefoot walkers, the ones who feel the quiet pull of the forest floor.

👉 Read “The Hidden Kingdom That Made Life on Earth Possible”

The Invisible Barrier Between You and Growth

What if you’re not blocked by your habits, but by your self-image?

In this review of of the book Psycho-Cybernetics, I reflect on how identity functions like soil. Determining what kind of growth can take root. I read this book 25 years ago, I’m still learning from it.

For this post, I’ve interpreted 4 practices that blend earth energy and inner work. The Hidden Barrier to Personal Growth is a gentle invitation to reimagine who you are, and who you’re becoming. My hope is that you’ll find value in understanding some principles from the 1950’s that underpin today’s Positive Psychology.

👉 Read “The Hidden Barrier to Personal Growth”

Blackout Poem

22
"earth"
due to pious acts of sacrifice,
can rise to return to
it's path.

I firstly encountered Blackout Poems through Austin Kleon, a mountain amongst creatives. It’s a lightweight practice, it’s quick and easy to do what I love most of all it’s gloriously analogue. I’d love to see your blackout poems, please feel free to post them in the comments or tag me in your note or post.

A Final Word

I’ve had quite a bit to say this week about AI and it’s impact on creativity and neurology.

If you’ve read some of my posts, you could be forgiven for believing I want nothing to do with anything AI. It is always my desire to be completely transparent with you dear reader. I do see the potential for Artificial Intelligence to do harm, in particular to human creativity and cognition. It’s a use it or lose scenario.

However in the same way it’s not helpful to run from our shadows (integrating shadows is powerful healing work), if we throw our hands in the air and ignore it. AI will continue to infiltrate our lives and we’ll have no influence over it how it shows up in our lives.

While the risks are many, there is upside. I’m using AI to help me organise my thoughts, to look for patterns in my thinking, to challenge my ideas and to consider some projects that would otherwise be creatively impossible.

🤫 I’m working on something top secret that I hope to reveal soon.

My bottom line on AI. Stay creative, write in notebooks, clarify your thinking, exercise your mind. Stay close to nature and cultivate that part of you that connects with the world beyond the senses.

Best, Dean

In the 1950s, plastic surgeon Dr. Maxwell Maltz noticed something profound. Patients whose faces were transformed surgically often remained imprisoned by their old self-image mentally. This observation revealed an invisible architect, the self-image silently orchestrating every aspect of our lives.

Your actions follow your identity. Your life reflects your self-image. Your potential awaits in the stories you tell yourself about who you truly are.

What Can a Plastic Surgeon Teach Us About Inner Transformation?

As a surgeon, Maltz witnessed how patients with identical procedures experienced wildly different outcomes. Successful transformations weren't from better surgeries, but from patients who changed how they saw themselves.

I discovered "Pscho-Cybernetics" as a 19 year old, very unhappy with the way I saw myself. I was reading a new Self Help book about every 10 days, full of hope and inspiration. Yet feeling unable to sustain lasting growth.

Maltz showed me why my external changes were failing.

Your Inner Ecosystem: How Self-Image Shapes What Can Grow

Our identities functions like a thermostat, maintaining what feels "normal" for you.

You’ve probably seen Lottery winners who return to poverty, dieters who regain weight. I have too. These patterns demonstrate how we unconsciously resist growth, that doesn't align with who we believe ourselves to be. Just as specific soil conditions determine which plants thrive.

Our self-beliefs determine what experiences and achievements can take root and flourish in our lives.

Becoming Who You're Meant to Be: Identity as Life Foundation

Unlike habit change that addresses surface behaviours, identity work transforms your core. When you shift how you see yourself, new behaviours emerge naturally.

This isn't creating a version of yourself that is artificial. Your authentic self already exists beneath limiting beliefs. The work is removing what blocks your natural expression, not forcing change.

Reimagining Your True Nature: Four Practices for Authentic Growth

I'm a firm believer that when we align to the frequency of the earth, we have access to the evolutionary potency of a planet built on evolution.

So here are some practises that you might think of as a collab called "Earth x Maltz".

1. Root Visualisation: Each morning, spend five minutes seeing yourself as the person you're becoming. Like a seed containing a full tree, visualise your expanded self already alive within you.

2. Daily Identity Journaling: Write three sentences from your future self who already embodies your desired qualities. Journaling Prompt: "I naturally attract supportive relationships because I value my own worth."

3. Nature-Mirror Practice: Find elements in nature that reflect qualities you're cultivating. A stoic Angophora fashioning out life on rocky clifftop might represent your growing resilience; flowing water your ability to adapt.

4. Compassionate Identity Expansion: Stand barefoot on earth and gently question your limits. "Who told me I couldn't be both nurturing and powerful? What if my sensitivity is actually my strength?"

Notice where your current identity might be limiting your authentic self. Are you "too busy" for stillness? "Not creative enough" to express yourself?

Just as forests regenerate after drought and bushfires, our identities can evolve with conscious tending.

Your true nature waits beneath the surface, ready to grow when given the right conditions.

I definitely recommend this book. Bearing in mind it was written a long time ago, it might seem a little dry by today’s non fiction environment. What makes “Pscho-Cybernetics” even more foundational to me is that Maltz’s principles were influential in the development of Positive Psychology decades later. I found ripples of influence in books like “Atomic Habits” by James Clear and “Be Your Future Self Now” by Dr Benjamin Hardy.

The underground fungal network connecting forests like a botanical internet.
But what most don’t realise is this: fungi predate terrestrial plants by over 500 million years. Without them, there would be no plants, no animals, no humans.

In fact, without fungi to break down organic matter, Earth would be buried under a 100-metre-thick blanket of undecomposed litter.

The first land plants were vulnerable pioneers. Like housemates moving out for the first time, they didn’t know the drill.

Lacking true roots, they struggled to access water and nutrients. Fortunately, mycorrhizal fungi stepped in, forming intimate partnerships with these early plants. They extended through the soil like nutrient-gathering limbs in exchange for sugar.

Fossils reveal this ancient pact: plant roots and fungal threads fossilised side by side.

These early alliances made life on land possible, forests, ecosystems, and us.

Today, fungi still support 90% of plants. They store 70% of soil carbon, clean toxins (even radioactive waste), and perhaps most miraculously they heal.

Ancient. Generous. Essential.

In 1990 if you wanted to enjoy Fine Art you had a couple of choices:

• Get off the couch and go to a gallery

• Go to an Artist's Studio

• Buy a coffee table book or an art magazine

• Go to a library and pore over Art Books

The appreciation of art was a more physical event, a pilgrimage, a more visceral experience. To get the dopamine hit required effort and had to be sought out rather than instantly on demand.

Fast forward to 2025:

• Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok et al predict the art you'll enjoy and deliver it to your pocket. Art appreciation has become art consumption, everywhere and every time. We've traded pilgrimage for scrolling, communion for consumption.

• Digital Art & NFTs remove the sensory experience, meaning art can't be held or touched. Texture is simulated, not seen physically and certainly not felt.

• AI Art is proliferating with models trained on the labour of artists who have not been rewarded for their service to the AI models and by extension to humanity.

The dopamine is fast, cheap and available all day every day. As the physical connection to art fades, so too our neurological experience of beauty changes.

Art In The Smartphone Era

The proto-Smartphones were released in the mid 90's and early 00's, however when Steve Jobs famously said:

Steve Jobs' famous line from the 2007 iPhone launch was:

"Today, we're introducing three revolutionary products. The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device."

"An iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator. An iPod, a phone... are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device. And we are calling it iPhone."

There were flow-on effects to the Art

• Social Media platforms created new economic models, democratising the art market. Artists could easily reach a global audience.

• Access to diverse art and artists was now possible.

• A new crop of younger collectors were born and naturally they began to seek artists closer in age and interests to themselves.

• As the volume of Social Media content grew, algorithms were needed to triage the firehose of the feeds we were seeing. Discovery was more reliant on machines and less on human connection and curiosity.

• By 2020 the rise of TikTok and its revolutionary FYP (For You Page) changed discovery forever. Here was an algorithm that could predict your taste. It was wildly successful and pretty soon all the big Social Media platforms followed suit.

• Art became more performative and designed to be chosen of the algorithm. Art practices everywhere were modified to capture attention.

• Fast feedback loops became disruptive to studio practice, as Artists in flow were interrupted by digital hearts and comments on their latest posts. The dopamine hit of likes now competes with the deeper satisfaction of creation itself.

Art In A Post Search World

The rise of AI means further changes to digital discovery.

Even a few shorts months ago, a Google search returned 100s, 1,000s and even 1,000,000s of web pages that could be points of truth. Today Google Search results are pre-empted with an AI summary. A machine gives one answer above all others. This is killing our critical thinking and hijacking the development of taste.

We are being robbed on the joy of exploration and discovery, more importantly the adage "use it or lose it applies".

Cultivating Human Creativity Is Vital

True creativity is a spiritual practice that connects us to deeper non-local consciousness. Many call this consciousness, The Muse.

As machine based creativity eats human creativity, we lose the cosmic factor of a human communing with the Benevolent Muse.

"A new more beautiful world waits patiently in consciousness for creatives to foster it into materiality."

Making art heals trauma, strengthens intuition, contributes to wellbeing and yes, it renews the world. We need more of it, not less of it.

The imperfections of handmade creation contains wisdom machine learning can't replace. Just ask a devotee of wabi-sabi. Goodness only knows there is a lot broken in our world, there are problems to solve. We need all the creativity and earthly wisdom we can "get our hands on".

We're witnessing the industrialisation of imagination, with creativity becoming yet another resource to extract. As AI replaces jobs and functions that were once the domain of humans and work and play come under the influence of machines. All humans become the Creative Directors of the models they interact with.

The antidote to AI isn't better algorithms. It's more human creativity, more messiness, more soul.

8 Simple Ways To Cultivate Your Creativity

Ultimately we serve humanity and ourselves by cultivating creativity. However if we are to evolve as a planet, we must be aware of the dangers of creative decline and re-double our efforts to cultivate creativity.

Here are 8 light ways to honour your creative spark and grow it whether you're a beginner or a master. It's called a creative practice for a reason. You need to practice.

1. Make space for the muse daily

As Steven Pressfield says "there is one area where the Muse cuts us a break, and this is it: She doesn’t demand massive amounts of time."

If you will make a daily habit of journalling, drawing, collaging, any small act of creativity. The Muse will hear your invitation and you will be rewarded.

2. Incorporate handwriting into your workflow

Screens and keyboards do all sorts of funny things to our brains.

Neuroscientists have found that handwriting strengthens memory, improves focus, and deepens understanding. They say it activates pathways in the brain that digital writing cannot hope to replicate. Sandra Fischer

Buy a notebook, write on the back of shopping receipts or old calendar, notice the difference.

Lately in an effort to reclaim some of my writing time from a keyboard. I'm experimenting with digital free writing in a notebook at the start and end of the day.

3. Make Artist Dates for yourself

An Artist Date is a solo expedition to nourish your inner creative — a weekly ritual of play and wonder that fills the well from which art flows. Coined by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way, it’s about courting your imagination like a beloved.

It's an hour or 20 minutes of scheduled play, extra points for novel environments and experiences.

4. Ground in nature

Nature is the original creative director. Spend time with her wisdom - walk barefoot on grass, sit beneath a tree, trace the patterns of leaves and clouds. Our ancestors created in rhythm with natural cycles, not algorithms. When you feel creatively blocked, the cure isn't scrolling for inspiration - it's reconnecting with the earth's creative pulse. Even 15 minutes of intentional nature communion can reset your nervous system and open creative channels that screens simply can't access.

5. Allow for reverie

Our most brilliant ideas arrive not when we're grinding, but when we're daydreaming. Modern productivity culture has villainized "doing nothing," yet reverie is creativity's secret weapon. Build purposeful pauses into your day - stare out windows, take meandering walks without destination, lie in the grass watching clouds shape-shift. These moments of unstructured mental wandering are when your subconscious makes its most powerful connections. Protect your right to daydream as fiercely as you protect your creative time.

6. Embrace imperfection

Perfection is the enemy of creation. The most compelling art contains the humanity of its maker - the wobble in the line, the unexpected color choice, the happy accident. While AI can produce flawless technical executions, it cannot replicate the glorious imperfections that make art resonate on a soul level. Practice finishing work before you think it's perfect. Share rough drafts. Fall in love with the process rather than the product. Your willingness to be imperfect gives others permission to create without fear.

7. Share your creativity

Inspiration comes in, you create, and then… You cant expect to have flow if you don't complete the cycle.

"Unexpressed creativity is not benign. It metastasizes. It turns into grief, rage, judgment, sorrow, shame." Elizabeth Gilbert -Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Find some way small or large to share your work with the world. My late uncle always used to share a dinner table story from something in nature that he'd observed that day. It made all our worlds' richer.

8. Encourage others

Can you be a cheerleader someone known to you or a complete stranger? Leave a comment, compliment the barista who just made their 200th coffee of the morning but took the time to make latte art in your cup.

You Say You Want A Revolution

This isn't about rejecting technology. It's about reclaiming our creative sovereignty in a world that increasingly wants to think for us.

Your creativity isn't just self-expression, it's revolution."

Ours is a dynamic planet; things are always changing.

But this,

this time, it feels different.

The world is in such flux right now, there is uncertainty in almost any arena.

• Politics (from global power to gender identity): seismic change.

• Economy (AI eating jobs, trade wars, cost of living crises): seismic.

• Environment (floods, fires, extinctions): unprecedented.

For many, this isn’t just headlines.

It’s sleepless nights, its burnout at work.

The quiet terror that things will never go back to normal.

There’s a growing sense that we’re standing at the edge of something significant... but no one gave us a map.

Here's what most people miss.

"We are the architects of our own evolution." - Richard Rudd, The Gene Keys

Don't Fight Change, Choose Evolution

We don't need to be passive victims in this season of change.

We live on an evolutionary planet.

Our world is rich and intricate, but it wasn't always this way.

• 470 Million years ago there were no plants.

• 200 Million years ago there were no mammals.

• 300 Thousands year ago there were no humans.

Yet through the potency of evolution, the planet and our society have evolved into this magnificent world we see around us today. Evolution isn't change for the sake of change. It's upgrading through iteration.

Best of all, evolution isn't a function that has been mothballed and lost to history. It's alive and well and available to each of us at anytime.

Optimising For A World That No Longer Exists

It's unmistakably human for changes in our operating environment to cause disorientation.

"Why are things I've always understood to be true, now different?"

Which takes away our feelings of safety. What starts as uncertainty can escalate to panic and pain.

Most conscious people will recognise the patterns and remember that calm comes from inside. They will create their own safety. Unfortunately everyone who falls into the fear trap, will panic.

Most people will hustle, they'll work harder, they will apply the old rules to optimise for a world that no longer exists. They’ll look to:

• institutions

• governments

• and old leaders

but those systems are built for stability, not transformation.

They will dig harder as if more of the same will solve what’s coming. It won’t.

When you remove the fear, and when you choose to evolve. Change is not something that takes from us, it provides opportunity and reveals potential.

The Quiet Power Of "What If"

We have all experienced moments of powerlessness. The rug pull of an unexpected death, the doctor's disastrous prognosis out of the blue, a downsizing, redundancy or restructure no one saw coming.

In these moments of despair, when disappointment can become depression. A most heroic human quality persists: that quiet voice of curiosity that asks "what if?"

"What if we did things differently?"

"What if we marched to the beat of our own drum?"

"What if my truth was equally valid as the ideas that are being forced upon me?"

These questions aren't just theoretical, they're lifelines.

I've experienced this firsthand during the darkest chapters of my life. Twice I've found myself in the depths of depression so severe that I considered ending my journey.

Yet in both instances, it wasn't medication or therapy alone that pulled me back from the edge, it was curiosity.

That faint but persistent wondering about what else might be possible opened doors when all seemed lost. Curiosity led to hope, and hope gradually illuminated a deeper understanding of who I truly am.

Pursuing Your Curiosity, Finding Your Superpower

What is curiosity?

A dictionary might define it as "a strong desire to know or learn something".

While that rings true at a surface level, it doesn't capture the deeper meaning of curiosity in our inner worlds.

Curiosity is not just a cognitive itch to be scratched.

It’s your soul whispering, saying:

“There is more. Come see.”

It's an invitation, a gravitational pull toward alignment.

Neuroscience can track its footprints. Psychology can describe its shape. But neither can touch its origin. Curiosity arrives like a breeze through the open window of the self; non-local, numinous, and deeply personal.

No one before or since has had or will have the same combination of taste, curiosity and experience as you. Your curiosity invites you to meet your superpower/s.

Making Curiosity Your North Star

In Naval Ravikant's 2018 epic Tweetstorm, "How to Get Rich (without getting lucky):" he talks about the path to wealth and impact is to cultivate "specific knowledge".

There are two points Naval makes that are pertinent to this discussion.

• Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now.

• Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you but will look like work to others.

Who needs discipline when pursuit of your curiosities leads you to a deeper understanding of yourself and your unique contribution to the world.

Naturally you'll work (or more likely play) longer and with more commitment than someone who is motivated by career advancement or recognition.

My own response to this new epoch that we have entered is to investigate what I have been curious about for the majority of my life; Art, Earth and Consciousness.

Art: Making The World New

Art leads humanity to feel new consciousness.

To feel resonance with a divine truth.

And through that experience we begin to see ourselves differently.

We see ourself as someone who responds to novel ideas and perspectives. Each resonance is an upgrade to identity.

In other words, culture leads.

Creativity is a supernatural faculty available to humanity. A new more beautiful world waits in consciousness for creatives to foster it into materiality.

It took me 27 years, a trip to the other side of the world and a wonderful book "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron to understand that I was a deeply creative person. It taught me how to cultivate my connection to the muse and it changed my life forever.

Honouring Our Earthly Roots

As a child, a youth and a young man, I felt embarrassed and at times ashamed of my upbringing. As a country kid who didn't attend school until I was 12, I felt unsophisticated and unprepared for the world outside our family farm.

Now I see my childhood as such an incredible blessing. Through those years, my curiosity about nature was momentarily satisfied by bush walks and intimate observation of nature.

Our farm was a campus in the Earth's Institute of Higher Learning. A twice daily trip to the Kolan River (next to our farm house) felt as if I was both a witness and a participant of an ecosystem of wonder. A visceral connection to a community of peers and experiences that affirmed a different kind of singularity, a oneness with the world.

You'll appreciate the shock of leaving the bosom of farm life and finding myself in school, university and later city life. As members of contemporary society. We have been programmed to see ourselves as seperate from nature. As cogs in the machine of colonialism, humanity's seperation from nature serves empire in two ways;

• Fear of the nature "out there", sends us rushing into the safety of the man made world.

• Ensures our willingness to exploit and extract natural capital

Any thought, feeling or action that brings us closer to nature brings access to more knowledge and adaptability. We connect with the evolutionary potency of a planet that has been iterating and optimising for 4.5Billion Years.

Raising Consciousness

The longer you experience the world, the more profound its intricacy and beauty become. You could put it down to imagination, but I've always been overcome by the idea that there is far more going on than the 5 senses reveal.

I've had so many experiences which support this notion. However like so many others I felt myself pulled back and forth between the material word our senses show us and the transcendence we feel when we sense divinity.

One of the highlights of 2024, was the discovery of a simple idea that changed everything.

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness.” Max Planck - 1918 Nobel Prize Winner and Godfather of Quantum Physics

Indigenous teachers told me the world was animate. Religious texts pointed to an omnipresent god. And meditation, psychedelics and creativity gave me access to unseen energy woven through the material world.

This simple quote from Planck, felt like relief. Planck investigated the world of matter and found consciousness at its crux.

It is perhaps unconventional to use two physicists’ quotes in regards to consciousness. However when poets, priests and physicists align it's difficult to ignore.

This entire essay is about finding solutions to the uncertainty of our lives, in these contemporary circumstances. So we turn to perhaps the best know of all physicists, Albert Einstein to understand that finding solutions requires different consciousness.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein - 1921 Nobel Prize Winner and Pioneer of Relativity

The more I do to raise my consciousness, the more I expand my awareness. The richer life becomes, and the more agency I feel. Somewhat paradoxically I also feel more surrendered, centred and at peace.

The most beautiful thing to me is, that all three; Art, Earth and Consciousness, are so obviously interconnected.

From Panic To Play

What if we made work feel like play, and changed our world in the process?

What if curiosity was not a luxury, but the engine of our evolution? Both as individuals and as a planet.

What if we move beyond fear and engage what energises us?

What if we shape a future: rooted in authenticity, creativity, and alignment?

The future of work isn’t working.

It’s playing for change.

“You’ll be the same person five years from now as you are today except for two things: the people you meet and the books you read.”

Charlie "Tremendous" Jones

It’s entirely possibly that particular adage has not aged well. Books have been on a steady decline and we are influenced both positively and otherwise by a 24/7 multimedia landscape.

In a world of unlimited and unverifiable answers, the questions we ask have become more important than ever.

Of course asking questions and examining one’s life is not a new idea.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Socrates

It turns out that asking the big questions didn’t go too well for Socrates. The quote above was famously uttered at his trial for impiety (a perceived lack of proper respect for something considered sacred) and corrupting youth in 399 BC. He was found guilty and asked to choose between exile and death. He chose death.

Painting As Posing Questions

Each painting poses and/or answers a question. Each wash, each moment of dropping pigment into a mass of water, each action in the painting process marks a search for answers.

There is a series of paintings that I find myself revisiting yearly, if not more regularly. “The Wattle Diaries” revere the spectacular life force of Wattle trees (Acacia spp) and what they contribute to the ecosystems the grow in. When viewed as an energetic presence rather than just their physical form, the mighty Wattle becomes emblematic of growth, expansion and generosity.

These qualities emerge as answers to a question that goes something like; “What is the quality of Wattle energy?” or “What does the energy of Wattle bring to the landscape”?

“The Four Invitations Of Syzygium Moorei” is a series of paintings exhibited at Lone Goat Gallery, Byron Bay in 2018. The series investigates the Coolamon Tree (Syzygium Moorei) and what it says about it’s endemic landscape, the Byron Bay region.

This series answers by reflecting the abundance, dynamics and femininity of this subtropical landscape and of the tree in question.

Asking Questions Of My Future Self

By now, you’re no doubt getting to understand that I see questions as spaces into which life force flows. That I seek questions worthy of a life well lived.

Recently I have been learning more about Positive Psychology and learning to ask questions through the lens of my Future Self.

• If your future self could live this day, how would you choose to respond?

• What experiences do you want to have in the next 12 months?

• What projects do you want to do that will change your life?

• What is your relationship to life?

These types of questions expand the possibilities I see for my life and pull me forward into a more compelling future.

Really Big Important Questions

I’d like to get to one big question, a whole of life question. A question so precise it cuts through any and all distraction, disillusionment and derailment. So riveting it reveals a passage and purpose to contribute something meaningful and wonderful to the world.

I feel extremely grateful to have found my life’s work. My vision is to have an international and professional career as an artist. My vision is to build a large new media business that enables my investigations to positively impact a great many people.

So this is where I find myself. Refining the question that powers my practise, that qualifies my quest and guides my growth spiritually, emotionally and intellectually. Refining a question that has resonance with many. A question so intriguing that it draws you in.

I don’t yet have the question, but I if I had to ask it right now it would look something like this:

“What are the possibilities for a human being in the 21st century acknowledging our true place in nature and accepting our connection to the planet?”

In fact in October 2018 I had an exhibition at Lone Goat Gallery in Byron Bay, called “The Four Invitations Of Syzygium Moorei”.

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Whatever we create in this magnificent world of ours, is at first a dream, a thought, a flash of inspiration.

From the tallest building to the smallest microscopic surgical device. From a hand grown tomato to a brand new Tesla rolling off the production line. It was at first a vision, a story, a light in the mind of someone.

What fills our hearts and minds today, will fill our days and nights in the tomorrow.

What if we were to use this time to raise our collective consciousness?

To envisage a new world, a better world, a world we feel connected to. A world where we feel we belong. A world we love and in return feel loved by.

I now believe know that we are all creators, if we choose to be.

We all have a muse or a source within our being. A source of flow and genius. A river of flow that is so much more than our individual parts.

Now in this turbulent time, when we are being invited into a spiral of fear. We have a golden opportunity, even more so I believe we have a responsibility. To create something beautiful, something that serves us.

To go deep inside ourselves. To bring to the surface, the values, the states of being, the gifts that we wish to see in the “new world”.

From ecology we know that the way to heal a fractured ecosystem is to restore connectivity. To connect the ecosystem to more of itself.

My mission and my practise are driven by a desire to cultivate connection. My paintings are portals for people to converse with the life-force of the planet. To feel more connected, to remember that nature is our nature. To connect to the great big love story that surrounds us and that flows true every cell in our body, life on earth.

This is a pivotal moment, the culture we choose now, will create our future. Culture leads.

Mystery Box Draw

Each month there will be a mystery box draw for all paid members. A little care package of items from around the studio. Maybe it will be a striking sketch made plein air at a location I’m currently connecting to. Maybe it will be a captivating collage exploring a new series. Possibly a work on canvas and a few beautiful post cards.

It’s a mystery, hence the name. The winner will be randomly drawn from the current list and a previous winner will miss the next two draws after their win, so as to give more chances to anyone who hasn’t yet received a prize.

For February 2023 the mystery box will contain an etching from 2002 titled Grevillia, and 3 postcards “Splendid Fairy Wren Imagines New Horizons” , “Fig Shoot In Mount WarningLandscape” (both from #TheCollageConnection project) and “Piccabeen Landscape Bangalow 003”.

And the winner is…

The winner of the February Mystery Box is Carly, I’ll be in touch by email to arrange the delivery of your prize.

Studio Sale Ends Tomorrow

Members also have until midnight tomorrow to make a purchase from the Studio Sale midnight tomorrow (Tuesday 21st) those paintings will be sacrificed or released in some form or other.

Studio Sale

Some members only content coming mid week, so until then. I hope you’ll choose culture that reflects your dreams for the future.

1. I’m gifting all subscribers a 7 day free trial of paid subscription. If you know someone who would appreciate a free trial send them he…

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“The thirteenth”. She replied: “well that’s a good day to die.”

I told her she wasn’t going to die today, but I was wrong.

Her final weeks, her final days, her final hours were in many ways her finest chapter. To bear witness her courage, her reconciliation with all that had passed through her life, and her peaceful and powerful passing was a gift. A gift that took time to be accepted, and yet a precious gift found in the ashes of grief.

My mother died as she had lived, a loving presence, gently and gracefully walking towards lightness.

Grief Has Its Own Schedule

The first 72 hours after a death are the weirdest. I’ve been told that being around childbirth and death stimulate the brain to release more DMT than usual. That makes sense to me.

After Mum’s passing (and subsequent passings of those closest to me) I remember a strange supernatural feeling. A waking dream, fleeting flashes of reality and a curious inner dialogue.

It’s difficult to describe, if you’ve been close to death you may well know what I mean. Suffice to say, understanding one’s loss and making sense of it are so elusive at that time.

Grief comes in its own time, in its own way. Leaking in, flooding in, creeping up, hitting you like a Mack truck.

I was in denial for the longest time. I didn’t grieve. I didn’t because I couldn’t bear to go there. So I denied and denied. I drank too much and when I still couldn’t grieve I went to Girraween.

Girraween, A Place Of Flowers

Painting en plein air on a Granite Boulder Girraween National Park January 2023

Girraween National Park is in Kambuwal country, half way between Tenterfeld and Stanthorpe. It bookends the northern end of the New England Tablelands. Spectacular granite tors and outcrops are framed by dazzling crystalline soils and the dark green and charcoal of the woodlands.

Girraween is often cited as an Aboriginal phrase that means “a place of flowers” and it is. However it seems that it might not be from a local language.

The National Park is a place I have returned to many times since I first discovered it while picking plums and tomatoes in late 1998. On reflection, it seems I have a habit of bringing grief there as I did in the summer of 2004. Hurting badly and on my way to rather severe depression, I packed some painting gear and went to Girraween solo to paint.

Art had saved my life once before and although I hadn’t recognised what was happening to me, I knew something was up. I hoped painting might be the salve I need.

I spent 3 or 4 days walking in the bush, drawing, lying in my tent and trying to paint. I couldn’t out run the demons, I was struggling to focus and although I was captivated by the beauty around me, I couldn’t feel it and I couldn’t paint it.

I managed some sketches on cartridge paper and in sketchbooks.

A Charcoal and Graphite Sketch Of “The Pyramids” January 2004

Sketch including frottage on granite boulders January 2004

Sketch including perceptions of Girraween as a soundscape, January 2004.

I struggled to find a motif, an image that encapsulated the many inspirations and relationship I felt. I left without finishing a painting.

I started one large drawing on 4 pieces of cartridge paper. A sprawling mass of line and texture with a rock formation called “The Pyramids” at the centre.

I completed the drawing in my studio in Monto, a few weeks later. In the years between 2001 and 2006 I had the great privilege of painting in the studio of the late painter Gil Jamieson.

Detail from a drawing started at Girraween and completed in Gil Jamieson’s studio in 2004.

Another Tilt At A Girraween Painting

In 2020 in the middle of lockdowns, with the hope of entering the Stanthorpe Art Prize. I decided to dig out the sketches from 2004 and create a painting from the sketches of “The Pyramids”.

Scaling up 2004 sketches for a canvas, March 2020

It was exhilarating to be tapping back into the energy of those drawings. For all the pain during their conception there was something wonderful about the original mark making and forms.

Making an under drawing with charcoal, March 2020

I decided to paint my art prize entry in oil paint. Which became problematic with a looming entry date and many layers to dry. A beautiful accident occurred after I painted over the charcoal underdrawing with powdered graphite and oil painting medium.

I had been painting outside and left the canvas in the afternoon sun to dry. A couple of hours into the drying, a shower came over and a new technique was discovered.

When I took the “work in progress” inside I found that the droplets of rain had repelled the oil paint medium leaving little holes that revealed more canvas. This added perfectly to the grainy appearance of the granite tor.

The Work In Progress with rain spots, March 2020

Alas the deadline arrived and the painting was incomplete once again.

A Return To Complete The Cycle

On the 31st of December 2022, my girlfriend Aurora and I made the trip once again to Girraween. This time with grief largely processed. I had two objectives:

1. To complete the painting that had been sketched out 19 years prior,

2. To release any lingering pain and ideas and feelings about my mother that no longer served.

Recreating a 2004 drawing in the spot it was created, Girraween NP 1st January 2023.

A shrine on one of Mum’s plates & making charcoal powder, 1st January 2023

It felt incredibly comforting to be back on that magnificent country. It’s strong. It feels so steady and solid. It’s a place that can hold grief and can hold a lot of emotion.

This time I was creating from a very different space, I understand myself differently. I understand how I connect to the landscape so much differently and I understand how I paint so much differently.

The 2023 trip was so affirming and energising, it was a significant test drive of my evolved painting process. It would suit the arc of this story so perfectly to show you the finished painting. The truth is, it’s not finished and it feels wrong to finish it anywhere other than Girraween.

So I’ll be heading back some day soon, with at least one canvas in hand.

While for me there has been so much letting go in Girraween, one thing is clear I’m not yet ready to let go of Girraween.

Evolving can be hard work. In fact, this week might have been the most uncomfortable yet.

I woke up at 3am Thursday morning, writing Substacks in my dreams. This time instead of going back to sleep, I tried something new. I got up, went out on the veranda, and wrote in the moonlight. In the sober light of morning, I discovered that I had written rather illegibly over other journal entries.

My startling starlight realisation? That if I’m going to invite you to share the journey, I have to share the journey. The actual journey. Not just the finished paintings when they arrive, not just the insights that come from connection. I need to be vulnerable enough to show you when I hurt and when I’m learning.

And lastly, that I need to be clear about what the journey is:

I’m investigating what it means to be a human being in 2023 acknowledging and accepting our true place in nature and our connection to the planet.

Not just a little bit, not an intellectual idea, rather an experiential investigation. A quest for contemporary landscape traditions.

Studio Sale

In the last 5 weeks I have sacrificed (burnt) 100’s of paintings.

It has been such a wonderful release for me. To look at them, to love them for all they have taught me and ultimately, to let them go. Taking action like this affirms my ability to create more. I can feel my standards rise and I can witness my self gaining more energy for the journey forward.

Today I sorted through some of the paintings in my studio. Some to sacrifice, some to keep, and some to paint over.

Then I lent into how it would feel to sell them. Paintings that were created with pure intention. That were as good as I could create at the time. Paintings I had every intention of selling when they were painted.

It actually felt harder than burning them.

It’s a lot to process, I have to admit to a bit of a tantrum.

I’ve settled on a studio sale. Drastically discounted prices, because I want to release them. Just like the sacrifices, I want to move these works out of my studio, out of my care and my attention field. I’m creating space for the new work I’m painting now.

And because I want these works to “go to good homes”, I’m not publishing them all over the internet. I’ve created something special, something sacred, for the people who have been part of my journey. I’ve put these very paintings in a special Members Only Lounge, here on Substack.

Members Lounge

Substack has the ability to create areas for paid subscribers. Although I have one lovely paid subscriber (1000 thank you’s R), I haven’t yet been creating content for paid subscribers.

So I’m starting right here, right now. For paid subscribers I’m creating 3 main benefits:

• members only prices on studio sales

• free entry into a members only monthly mystery box draw (the winner gets swag from the studio)

• members only content

Free 7 Day Trial

To remove all the friction and to support those who support me, until Valentines Day I’m offering a 7 day free trial of paid subscription to my Subscribers Only content.

Get 7 day free trial

This will allow you to get access to the Studio Sale in the Members Lounge for free. It also allows me to conduct the studio sale with privacy and for those who most support me.

So if you would like to check out the paintings that haven’t been burnt (yet) or you think you might be able to offer one or more “a good home”. Or better yet, you’d like to join me on this journey of exploring connection, please hit the button and trial a membership.

“Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.” — Zen Kōan

I clearly remember sitting in the ballroom of an upmarket hotel in Cairns, with a raisin in my hand. The seminar was being conducted by the enigmatic Stuart Wilde. A self styled author and metaphysical mystic, the lesson was on the sacred.

Stuart was no fan of authority or dogma, or organised religion. So in an effort to give “sacred” back to the people, he gave each seminar attendee a raisin. For 10 minutes or more we meditated on the raisin, we observed it in exquisite detail. We smelt it, and eventually we put it in our mouths. “Don’t bite it!”, Stuart boomed from the front of the room. He was highly animated and seemed to me he must almost certainly hold some secret knowledge about this bloody raisin. “Just roll it around in your mouth”. On and on it went, until he said “Now you can eat it! So, isn’t that the best raisin you’ve ever had in your life?”.

He was right. It was the most delicious raisin I’ve eaten, before or since. His point? We get to decide meaning in our lives. We get to decide what is sacred. We make it so by giving it attention. By revering the “sacred to us item”, by being grateful. The lesson was a gift. It’s one I have remembered and implemented throughout my life.

Chop Wood, Make Charcoal

I actually love chopping wood. One of my “chores” growing up on a farm was to chop and carry the firewood. I loved the physical challenge and the responsibility of what it meant. No wood, no hot water and no food.

As my art practise has developed and I have sought to be more connected to country, I have begun collecting and making charcoal from the country I’m painting.

I love to think about the trees that have grown in a particular landscape. How their growth rings reflect the seasons, how they know the winds and the rain of their particular place on the earth. How the Wood Wide Web connects the trees to the rest of the ecosystem.

Like Enya said “the memory of trees”.

So I collect charcoal and I make charcoal from the country I’m painting. Why? Because the charcoal has memory, it has been shaped and twisted as a record of place. As I have found, when you grind it and prepare it and put it on paper or canvas, it’s incredibly expressive.

Charcoal on paper and canvas works in progress at Girraween National Park

Not only has this been a rewarding experience, it has also become a sacred one. So, I take time to acknowledge the country, the custodians and ancestors each time I collect or make charcoal. The more integrity I put into my process, the more the materials express themselves in the most delightful ways.

Carry Water

In 14 years of living in the Byron Bay region, I have found myself being drawn back to Koonyum Range many times, in fact I started living on the range again in November 2022. To honour this special place, I have started a new series of Koonyum paintings. I have no title for the series as yet, but you’ll be hearing all about them very soon.

My reason for introducing you to Koonyum is the place it holds in introducing the significance of water in my practise.

On the 12th June 2018, I was housesitting on Koonyum, less than a kilometre from where I live now. It occurred to me that as I was painting local landscape, I could honour it by collecting water from the country I was painting.

An Instagram Story posted in June 2018 about collecting water from the landscape.

This ritual became more engrained in my painting practise, but it was what was yet to come that really locked it in.

In February 2021 I posted a 15 second video on TikTok about collecting wild water for painting. I couldn’t work out what was happening at the time, notifications suddenly went out of control. The video was seen over 450,000 times, so many wonderful things happened after that.

@deanpower.artI collect water from the country I’m painting on. 🎶 by @damien.robitaille #10kartists #artistsupportartist #10kartist #arttok #connectiontocountry

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I was interviewed by a student doing a paper of connection to country. I was contacted by a woman from Appalachia who offered to send me water to paint with. Art students contacted me saying their teacher was using my video in class. It was an extraordinary moment, and it convinced me that my practise of collecting of water and making pigment was important, and it needed to be made sacred.

From my experiences and from learning I have come to understand that connection, and connection to nature create so much value for us all.

The literal act of chopping wood (for charcoal) and carrying water creates a physical connection from landscape through my body and into my paintings.

While I’m still working toward enlightenment, like the good buddhists say, I will chop wood and carry water.

I’m outside chasing sunshine, painting and listening to the radio. Radio National is blaring from a large 1970’s wooden case ‘stereo’ in the lounge room. Loud enough that I can comfortably hear Rhoda Roberts presenting another fascinating episode of AWAYE. AWAYE is an Aboriginal Arts and Culture show that I enjoy so much I often try to catch the repeat.

I don’t know it yet, but I’m about to experience what Japanese Buddhists call a Satori.

You know how people ask: “Do you remember where you were when you heard Lady Di had been in a fatal car crash?” Or “when WTC came down?” Those life altering moments, those milestones in the unfolding of reality, when life as we know it, shifts. Well this is one of those moments for me.

In this particular radio show Rhoda is talking about “connection to country”. The narrative is filling me with warmth and a desire to know that feeling of connection intimately. Then the voice of an older Aboriginal man says, in an assured tone, “without country you will never be well”.

I slap my forehead, I search for a chair and sit to contemplate the simple, direct statement I just heard. “Without country you will never be well”. What does he mean? Am I personally with or without country? Are those of us without an Indigenous landscape tradition predisposed to poor health? How do I go about getting “country”?

For the last 22 years, from time to time, I would ask Google, I would ask the Radio National website, and I would even ask Rhoda Roberts personally… to discover a transcript of the show, or the identity of the man whose words so shocked me with such profundity. Rhoda kindly suggested that I contact Daniel Browning, another magnificent human whose contribution (like Rhoda’s) to sharing Aboriginal and cultural stories is monumental. “Daniel would most likely have been the producer of that show” Rhoda told me.

Fast forward to January 2023, I opened up Instagram to a photo of Daniel Browning with a caption that he would be speaking on Saturday 21st, at Northern Rivers Community Gallery.

It feels like destiny. It feels as if in a time when I’m deepening my practise. When I’m turning the meaning knob to 11, a man, who may hold the key to illuminating an inflection point in my practise, has been put on my path.

Daniel is sitting at the front of the room when my girlfriend Aurora and I arrive. We sit, and I listen to the sound of his voice. I’ve heard it 100’s of times before on radio. This is the first time I’ve heard him in person. He’s charming, engaging and insightful as he conducts a conversation with the artist Marian Tubbs. It’s her show “reversible destiny” that we are here to see.

As he finishes I make my way to the front of the room, against the exiting crowd. Daniel listens rather generously as I explain my quest. He nods, ‘I can get that for you’ he says referring to the transcript of the show, and he takes down my details.

I’m overwhelmed with feelings of gratitude, feelings of support, of confirmation of my path and my practise. Since hearing that phrase I have held close the value of connection. I have come to nature to heal, to align, to touch the infinite. I have drawn, painted, made collages, and written to deepen that very relationship.

This year I have committed to myself, and I suppose, I have committed publicly to you, dear reader. That connection to country is the first and primary act in my practise both, creatively and in my broader life.

From my blessed childhood to my life now, there has been a long and very beautiful thread. Connecting to nature, acknowledging my place in it, acknowledging that the earth heals me and empowers me.

Fortunately science, spirituality and lived experience converge on this matter. “Forest bathing” , Taoist Tree Meditation and general spending time with nature have been shown to benefit our well being.

So much about modern life and western lifestyle separates us from nature. We live in buildings fabricated to keep nature and the elements out. To create a micro climate for “clean living”, where our attention is drawn every waking moment into a digital deluge, a cognitive copiousness. We can be forgiven for forgetting that our true nature is nature. We, humans, are organisms evolved from nature. We share matter, energy and ancestry with the other members of this planetary ecosystem.

These posts document my investigation into what it means to be a human being, consciously connecting to the planet in the 21st century.

I hope you will join me in both, this newsletter journey and in the journey of connection.

“I believe that art is a powerful force for good. As Sigmund Freud said “human beings need beauty”. No one can understand why or explain it, but we need it. And it makes us what we are.” Sean Scully

It’s not that I don’t value beauty, in fact I revere it.

I just don’t want to pretend I can be of service by I thinking up paintings that look beautiful.

When I started painting in 1997, I didn’t believe I could paint or draw. I was living in Canada, far from the familiarities and habits of my homeland Australia.

What stood out to me on arriving in a foreign land, was that I felt compelled to walk on that country. To explore, to take in the landscape, to gawk at trees and mountains and lakes. To marvel at birds and the creatures that inhabited the place.

Canadian Landscape Photo 1997

I would not have used this language then. However what I was doing and what I have always done is to connect to nature, connect to the country, and to the landscape that I’m living, dreaming and working on.

I was 27 years old and I was beginning to discover things about myself. Things that were both new to my awareness, yet deeply and indelibly imprinted upon my soul.

I discovered my instinct was to connect to nature. I discovered that this connection energised and informed me. Then through a very beautiful book called “The Artist’s Way”, I discovered that I was and always had been a creative person.

I could say so much about Julian Cameron and “The Artist’s Way”, and at some point I will. However suffice to say, I started painting as “an experiment” through that book. 3 years later I had my first exhibitions and I have been painting ever since.

Press Shot from my first exhibition Modus Galleries, New Farm 2000

In 2022 I Had To Stop Painting

2022 was a tumultuous year. It was for many of us, if not all of us.

In 2020 and 2021 I had been digging myself deeper and deeper into a creative hole. I was striving to create more meaning in my art practise. Pushing my mind to create paintings that meant more. Paintings that had more impact.

I was racking my brain to create images that broke through to another level. Striving for the piece that would “crack it open”.

I willed that Dylan Thomas’s “..force that through the green fuse drives the flower…” would give power to my arm. I journaled long prayers beseeching the earth on behalf of every kind of human I could imagine, to bring a message of connection and healing.

However apart from glimpses here and there, I struggled. My practise was laborious, there was no flow and beauty was hard to come by.

There were some moments, beautiful moments. Particularly involving the community that had grown around my practise on Social Media. I found myself more and more thinking about how a painting session could serve the content creation, that my Social Media feeds were ravenous for.

That was my challenge, powering my practise with mental energy.

2021 had it’s own way of telling me, Get Out Of Your Head, The Body Is Where It’s At. I had a series of catastrophes that kept bringing me back to my body.

So I surrendered. I stopped.

I stopped painting, I stopped working, I surrendered to deep rest.

I fasted. 5 weeks of fruit fasting, 2 weeks of juice fasting and 7 days water fasting. I shed 20 kilograms. I shed toxins, I shed inflammation, I shed emotions that had been trapped in my tissues.

Somewhere in the middle of fasting I began drawing. I began dreaming of an evolved art practise, an evolved way of doing life. An art practise that was centred around connection to nature, connection to country and that honoured the wisdom of the planet.

A Pristine New Container

I have at times literally and certainly metaphorically “burned my practise to the ground”. I have “sacrificed” paintings, notebooks, sketchbooks, beliefs.

I have let go of many things that no longer serve me or represent my current.

At the same time I have examined how I bring the greatest possible integrity I can to my practise. To create a pristine container for my work to flow, grow and expand in.

I retained and amplified the things that do work, that do flow and most importantly the things that honour my muse, the earth we share.

A manifesto of sorts has begun to emerge.

• Start with connection. Connection to the country, the landscape I’m painting.

• Make the connection ceremonial. Use ritual to honour the life force of the earth, the traditional custodians, ancestors, the beauty and strength of the land I’m standing on.

• Collect “wild water” from the country I’m painting (it carries the energy of place).

• Collect pigment, forage charcoal, make charcoal.

• Allow the water to express itself as it wants to express itself on paper and canvas.

• Use my mental energy to create a pristine container for my work. Resist the urge to “think”, rather use my body to respond.

I’m sure there is more to come. This life is nothing if not evolution and so it is with my painting.

Finding Substack

In the last quarter of 2022, I became more enamoured with Substack. I found Artists like , and who are building the most interesting communities and publications on Substack.

It occurred to me that Substack can be a “Pristine Container”, an algorithm free place to share art, to share adventures and to ultimately create more meaning. More value for you.

For the people who have a nagging impulse or a burning desire. Who have a belief that #ConnectionHeals.

Who believe that by connecting with and honouring the life-force of the planet.

We all do better.