This post picks up where I left off in my introduction to Australia’s Lord Howe Island about a year ago, now that I’ve completed the watercolor map inspired by my visit there in 2010! This new work’s primary aim follows the “compression” theme of all the other worldviews—the composition’s multifaceted structure heightens the striking amount of ecological and topographical diversity squeezed into the island’s tiny area of roughly 2x10km.

As I’ve written before, the “compression” theme across all the worldviews to varying degrees incorporates a quality of fragility and vulnerability—a function of not just these places’ environmental uniqueness but also (especially in the case of oceanic islands) their particular susceptibility to accelerating environmental threats like climate change and invasive species….The fracturing could imply something completely opposite of the compressing, structuring, and freezing-in-place (“crystallizing”?) effect that it’s meant to have. It could also suggest instability, shattering, or disintegration, especially in the more recent, more highly fragmented watercolor maps. Again this second interpretation of the fragmentation has never been the original intent. But by the time I began Perched I did have it in the back of my mind, and about halfway through the painting process I decided to accentuate that “instability” factor in an additional way.