For the Term of His Natural Life

Some artworks begin with a clear idea. This mixed media piece was not one of them.

When I started creating For the Term of His Natural Life, I had no idea how it would end. There was no title waiting in the background and no predetermined destination. I simply allowed the work to develop through layers of colour, texture, geometry, marks and intuition.

Colours collided. Light appeared against darkness. Forms emerged and disappeared until the work slowly began to reveal its own character.

It was only near the end that I thought of Marcus Clarke’s For the Term of His Natural Life, a novel I have returned to three times over the years. Its story is one of wrongful conviction, suffering, injustice and endurance, set within the harsh and often brutal world of colonial Van Diemen’s Land.

The story of Richard Devine and his desperate struggle against cruelty and circumstance somehow entered the painting at its final stage. I cannot say that I illustrated the novel or consciously painted its narrative. The connection was more instinctive than that. But when the title came, it felt inevitable.

Set against the brutal history of Van Diemen’s Land, For the Term of His Natural Life explores injustice, suffering, cruelty and the extraordinary resilience of the human spirit. Richard Devine, as mentioned earlier, was wrongly convicted and transported to the colony, seemed to echo something within the darker layers and dramatic tensions of this work.

The title arrived late, but once it did, I knew it belonged to the artwork.

🔹- Available in a variety of sizes printed on canvas, click here for more information.

Original has already found its home.