The Southern Basin Floodplains were awash with water in October 2022.

Sky Water Season was born out of these floods. The primary driver of my work is my experience of living deeply immersed in this ephemeral landscape. We levee banked our home and the home of friends and neighbours as we watched and waited while nature filled our rivers, creeks and lagoons. What then followed was an amazing season of abundance and rebirth for our country. Light shimmered, ancient trees renewed their canopies, birds and frogs chorused and everywhere I looked sky and water merged in a spectacle of abundance and renewal. I celebrated the landscape and painted.    

In his address at the opening of the Paddington Art Prize in 2022, artist Black Douglas spoke about the cycle of the wet being regarded as a matriarchal time. He portrayed this in his powerful 2022 Archibald Prize winning work Moby Dickens. Here in magnificent Barapa Barapa country, water is life and renewal and my paintings continue to be an advocate for acknowledgement of the ecological and cultural importance of our inland wetland systems."

Wendy McDonald Oct 2023