This series of paintings was born when I began to catalogue my dad’s photos from his anthropological study on trade on the north coast of Papua New Guinea. When I posted my dad’s  historical photos on Instagram I was inspired by the images from PNG that followed.  I became interested in images of people with a symbiotic and subsistent relationship to the coast. And I was moved by the never-ending stories that contain important knowledge that is passed on and holds cultures together. I see coastlines as a borderline for transformation. I chose to paint with a specific palette of predominantly pinks and yellows for their luminescence referencing both Turner’s seascapes and Turrell’s skylights.

 

See un_archive “Freeing the photo archive of Thomas G Harding, Anthropologist, 1937-2013”