The mosaic patterns and symmetry of the farmed landscape, and the ways man-made patterns have impacted the flow of natural processes on the countryside, triggered the idea of inviting six leading Australian artists and six regenerative farmers in southern New South Wales to work together on the Earth Canvas project.

The Earth Canvas team endeavoured to create an opportunity for people to look at the landscape from a creative perspective and to give more consideration to the health of the environment. It also gave the general public a chance to spend a day on a regenerative farm during the November 2019 Open Days. The artists were asked to create a body of artworks to express their experience of a regenerative farm. It was hoped the experience would encourage land managers and food consumers and agencies to see the landscape in a more empathic way, and thereby help to create a healthier world.

Earth Canvas was a win–win project for everyone concerned. During the on-farm Open Days, over 500 visitors experienced first hand what a regenerative farm looks like. The artists shared their responses to the landscape, and gained a deeper understanding of land management, and food and fibre production. The regenerative farmers shared how they work with nature to build a healthy ecosystem as well as a profitable business, and saw their land anew through the eyes of the artists they were paired with.

The shared experience gave the participating artists, farmers and visitors a fuller appreciation of the land’s patterns, colours, and natural and man-made formations. Artists are important for the whole community. In the same way that regenerative farmers have a symbiotic connection to their land and to the animals they raise, an artist must attempt to bridge the gap between themselves and the subject of their art. As John Wolseley has said: If you want to paint bamboo, you have to draw, draw and draw bamboo, until you become the bamboo.

Historically, Europeans have managed land by containing it within boundary fences, with little consideration for their neighbouring human communities, or for the waterways, soils and plants beyond the titled land. The farming systems introduced by the early colonisers disregarded the age-old land management practices of the country’s First Nation peoples. Unlike European farming methods, the Aborigines’ Dreamtime stories, songlines, and hunting, gathering and food production methods respected and were in harmony with the land and its ecosystem.

The Earth Canvas exhibition is for everyone. It is an opportunity to engage with a 21st-century way of working with the landscape. It is designed to allow the viewer to look at the works of art and photographic images of the land that inspired the artists. It will give visitors an opportunity to see the beauty and rhythm of nature. Humans are a part of the natural process, and we need to feel and breathe and think about how our decisions affect the landscape into the future.

Gillian Sanbrook
Chairman Earth Canvas