A collation of images documenting the life of a travelling artwork.

This drawing was made from foraged Bloodwood tree sap found whilst walking in Gheerulla on Jinibara Country in the Winter of 2021.

Tree Poem - II, is on show at The Court House Gallery in Cairns as of the 18th of February until the 23rd of April 2022, as a part of the Paint the Town: Flying Arts Alliance, Touring Exhibition which will tour across Regional Queensland until 2023.

Tree Poem - II

These drawings are a part of an on-going project entitled Sap Works.

Sap Works is an intimate study of the interwoven connectivities between bodies of trees and human beings, specifically the female body. This work intricately studies Bloodwood trees and the sap that they excrete by mapping stressed Bloodwood trees across the Sunshine Coast region and stress within the artists body.

These ‘stress exchanges’ become a series of intimate durational and ritualistic performances, derived from MacLeod’s ancestral lineage to Celtic/ Gaelic culture, landscape and language. Enigmatic sap pigment drawings are captured on handmade paper, a poetic exchange between body and tree.

Ogham, is the ancient Celtic language of the trees, and it is this ancestral knowledge that has been the conduit connecting MacLeod to this landscape after leaving the rural Hebrides of Scotland almost three years ago.

Sap Works is a process of re-connecting and understanding. Cross cultural narratives give meaning to the artists transitory belonging.