Bruce Bay and Beyond

This current Adventure in Art began in 2015 at Bruce Bay on the South Island of New Zealand some Forty kilometers South of Fox Glacier.
I was struck by the profound visual of sculptured forms in wood, light, sand and sea.
Sadly Bruce Bay as it was is no more as it has been transformed into a new road utilizing the forms that were there into a retaining and rock wall to hold back the sea from the new road.
Nothing of the old beach can be recognized or has been left as it was in the past.
The original contact which I stumbled upon by accident in 2015 became an Epiphany and I began to take photos with no concern for time, weather or where I was on that day/s. All that counted was the recording of forms and shapes on this beach.
“This Beach that is No More’.
For me it was discovery. A new Journey. It became and Exploration of Abstract forms in Nature.
Close up and Face to Face.
No name, No tracks, No trace, No involvement, No damage or clutter of humans Just sculptured raw forms.
Bruce Bay Featured in my first book “Accellerator’ in which I presented an ideal world except in the piece “Driven”. I believe this piece has relevance as it did not arrive at Bruce Bay via wheels. It was washed ashore at some stormy interval.
This second Book “Tide Line” is a collaboration with Artist John Dahlsen and examines the impact of Weather, Wind, Tide and Waves without influence of Humans on this fragile Coastline and also displays and involves John’s major works of the Pacific Vortex “Garbage Patch’, “Detail Series’ and other Subjects.
Presenting natural Beach sculpture and Micro Landscape Works the Photo images were captured on location at Hunts Beach, Gillespie Beach and other places that hold a wealth of Debris and Form.
All of the works are now titled.
I have never set out to deliver a Statement about Environmental concerns nor do I need to. Just to document and observe in the Present is enough.
A discovery.

Don Hill 2020

Accidental Activists

John Dahlsen and I cut a contrast as the washed up plastics and detritus John uses in his art does not appear in any of my pieces from the Southern Ocean area at present or not so much so that it actually makes a visual impact, presence and difference.
There is an ever present natural beauty in the Beach scape in these areas in the south with little or no man made debris as most of the Detritus appears in the north from Gippsland and further up towards Asia.
We have both had the Epiphany moment of finding ourselves involved in an accidental environmental activist role whether it was voluntary or not.
This was never my intent although this is what it has become.
Bruce Bay was the Awakening.
Most of my previous works involved capturing moments in the Moreton Bay area in Oil Paint.
The book ‘Tide Line’ is an important work environmentally as it depicts a world which still is beautiful and at the same time is becoming overrun by plastics and also a perfect world which has none of this except that the rate of erosion is increasing in the South as the glaciers melt and rain
events increase.
Where does the Tide stop?
Don Hill 2020

List of works Nudgee Beach and Boondall Wetlands

1. Sunshine and Rain
2. Soldiers were here
3. Sunday
4. Sargasso
5. Creation with Wood
6. Capture Two
7. Water and Shape
8. Tracked
9. Caught on a Cloud
10. Life in the Shadows
11. Silvering the Beach
12. Stipple Dawn
13. Life by the Sea
14. Subdued Composition
15. Depth of Heaven
16. Sequence
17. Fade of Light