Additional Information

Last Stand is a medium sized work in portrait format, painted in acrylic and oil pastel on deep sided stretched cotton duck. The painting features a old River Red gum tree along a section of the Lachlan River in Forbes NSW. There are also three (3) Australian birds somewhat hidden in the painting, a rosella, a black cockatoo and a galah.The river is visible behind the tree.

This work is unframed, but is ready to hang on deep sided canvas.The painting continues around the sides of the canvas. The colours feature warm blues with red, yellow and brown ochres. The painting style is abstracted and textured with multiple brush strokes overlaying colour and is highly textured.

The River Red Gum depicted in ‘Last Stand’ is one of a few monster trees left standing by the Lachlan River Forbes. The girth of this tree suggests that it is hundreds of years old and has been standing long before Forbes was settled as a community.

Australia has an appalling record for species and habitat extinction and loss. These beautiful old trees need to be preserved and conserved; they form whole habitats for our dwindling native birds and animals. Old growth trees not only provide food and roosting shelter in their foliage but reproductive measures in the trunk and branch hollows that take decades to form. There is no consolation in destroying habitat and then replanting, as species such as swift parrots on the brink of extinction, cannot wait the hundred years for these beautiful old trees to mature and provide ongoing habitat. We must preserve trees such as these as our heritage for the future.