In Search of New Colour: Notes from the Blue Mountains
Introduction — A New Landscape, A New Way of Seeing
Travelling as an artist always sharpens the senses. Every new landscape brings a shift: in colour, in rhythm, in the quality of light and that shift finds its way into the work.
Here in the Blue Mountains of Australia, that change has been immediate and profound.
Discovering New “Fairy Lands”
Georgiana Molloy once wrote:
“Such flowers of imagination… to come suddenly upon such gems and be surrounded by them makes you for a time think you are in fairy land.”
Her words feel especially close to me here.
There is a quiet joy in encountering an unfamiliar landscape — the sense of stepping briefly into another world, shaped by plants, colours and atmospheres completely unlike those at home.
It is exactly that feeling of wonder, of being “in fairy land” that is already reshaping the paintings I’m beginning here.
Why the Blue Mountains Are Blue
One of the first things you notice here is the colour — a soft, luminous blue that hangs over the valleys like mist.
The reason is botanical as much as atmospheric:
The vast eucalyptus forests release volatile oils into the air.
Sunlight passes through these suspended particles.
The particles scatter blue wavelengths of light, creating the distinctive haze.
It is science, but it feels like alchemy.
For a painter, the challenge and delight lie in watching this blue shift throughout the day:
Morning: cool, translucent blue
Midday: deeper, smoky blue
Evening: violet-tinged, almost iridescent
Here, colour is a form of time.
Changing with wind, temperature, humidity and light and shifting moment by moment.
Colour as a Micro-Season
Each variation in weather brings a new palette:
a sudden clearing sky sharpens the blue
heat deepens it
a cool wind softens it
humidity makes the light shimmer
These passing atmospheres feel like micro-seasons; brief shifts that alter the whole mood.
This blue haze has already entered my paintings in quiet ways:
as undertone, as softness, as a sense of depth and held light.
It reminds me that painting is not just about depicting what is seen, but about honouring what is felt.
Women of Flowers — Returning to Earlier Work
Being here has brought me back to one of the most meaningful collaborations of my career: my residency in Portugal with the Australian artist India Flint, and our later exhibition Daughters of Eve.
That work celebrated women, real and mythical, whose lives were interwoven with plants: gatherers, botanists, mythic flower-women, and those whose stories turn upon transformation in nature.
One of them, Georgiana Molloy, feels particularly present now.
An Englishwoman who emigrated to Western Australia in the 1830s, she became one of the region’s earliest botanical collectors. Her letters are filled with sensitivity and astonishment at the plants she encountered — the colours, forms and scents so unlike those she had known at home.
It was Georgiana who wrote the “fairy land” line that has echoed through my travels:
“Such flowers of imagination… to come suddenly on such gems and be surrounded by them makes you for a time think you are in fairy land.”
Her words describe precisely the experience of being changed by place, of having one’s way of seeing expanded by an unfamiliar landscape.
Standing here among eucalyptus forests, learning the quality of Australian light, I feel linked to her through that same sense of wonder. It feels like a continuation of the Daughters of Eve project: another chapter in the ongoing relationship between women, landscape, and the stories we gather from the natural world.
What Comes Next
Over the coming weeks I’ll be walking, sketching, and painting each day — exploring eucalyptus light, shifting blues, and the botanical stories held in this landscape.
I’ll share more soon, including early studies and notes from the trails around the Blue Mountains.
For now, I’m simply grateful to be changed by a new place, and to let that change move through the work.
More from the blog …
Georgiana Molloy: A Botanical Life, A Creative Lineage
Knapweed, Nature’s Resilient Marvel
The Enchantment Of Bluebells