Interview with Australian Landscape Painter Mary Tonkin

In June 2021, the Dandenong Ranges were hit by extreme winds.

In 2023 Australian landscape painter Mary Tonkin stood and painted at the foot of one of the many old trees uprooted in this storm.

Featured in our current exhibition Ngarn Wa'ngal: Art of the gum tree, her work 'A scream, Kalorama' considers the damage done and the terror yet to come.

What have you depicted here in your painting featured in Ngarn Wa’ngal: Art of the gum tree?
This is a rootball of a Wurun / Eucalyptus viminalis / Manna Gum that fell in the storm of 2021 that hit parts of Victoria with cyclonic winds.

Your work is titled ‘A scream, Kalorama’. What inspired this title?
It is an existential cry of despair at the damage we have wrought to our planet, of anguish at what is to come. The catastrophic storm that felled this giant made that feel very real.

You live in the Dandenongs. Do you take your easel out into the trees and paint among them? What is that experience like for you?
Yes, I always work outside. It is a great joy and a deep privilege. I do a very simple thing; stand and make things in response to what is there and what arises in me while I'm there. I am witness to so much life, to such a rich sensuous experience. It is where I am most myself, most able to open onto what is there as it opens upon me.

The scale of this work is very large and it immediately pulls you in. Why did you choose to paint with such a large scale?
This is a life size representation, to convey the presence of this giant, the enormity and gravity of the loss. I wanted to make a very confronting image, an unavoidable and unsettling confrontation with a viewer.

Have you always lived near lots of trees or did you consciously make a move to live somewhere that nature is all around?
I am very lucky to paint in the bush of Mum's farm - where I grew up.

You’re an Australian landscape painter. What do you love and appreciate about the Australian bush and about gum trees?
I love the unruly nature of the Australian bush - it's quiet richness. I work in the shadow of giants like this one, they're so full of life, sustaining so many diverse creatures and organisms. They're also incredibly beautiful, have such a luminous presence. 

See 'A scream, Kalorama' as part of Ngarn Wa'ngal: Art of the gum tree. Closing 21 November.