Rape of the Land

Rape of the Land is a haunting surrealist landscape about the uneasy relationship between humanity and the natural world.

The painting grew from the artist’s travels through New Zealand’s South Island, where she encountered a forgotten car yard filled with old, abandoned vehicles. She stopped to photograph the scene, never knowing that these images would later become the visual seeds for this strange and contemplative work.

At the centre sits a solitary woman beside the enormous stump of an ancient tree. She appears quiet and almost mournful, as though she is listening to something only she can hear. From beneath the severed tree, water continues to flow, creating a small waterfall — a powerful reminder that nature persists even after it has been cut down. Around her, the discarded cars have accumulated like the remains of another civilisation. They climb over the landscape, rusting and decaying, while grasses, flowers, rocks and water slowly begin to reclaim the spaces that humans have abandoned.

The cars represent industry, consumption and human intrusion; the tree and flowing water represent something older, quieter and more enduring. There is an intimate relationship between the woman and the tree stump. She seems almost like a witness at its grave, while the tiny flowers growing beside her suggest that death and renewal are never completely separate. Perhaps she is mourning what has been lost — or perhaps she has simply stayed long enough to see nature begin taking its territory back.

The painting inspired the artist to write “The Song of the Ancient Tree,” a poem that was published alongside the painting in her art journal Explorations of the Mirror. Together, the painting and poem become a lament for the natural world — but also a quiet reminder that beneath the machinery, the wreckage and the scars we leave behind, the land is still singing, still flowing, and still finding a way to reclaim itself.