Clare James’ detailed world

Clare James draws her inspiration from the natural world around her and the small details of life shared with her family. So living in the idyllic natural surrounds of Healesville, would certainly provide plenty of stimulus to inspire her. Her soft watercolours have a beautiful intricate quality without the fussyness of perfection. She works in a few different mediums including ceramics and has a range of cushions, prints and cards, which she had on show at the Yarra Valley Open Studios weekend last year.

She is currently having an exhibition of her latest work at Yering Station in Yarra Glen. The show features artworks created during a 31 day stay in a tent in her back garden, which explains the incredible attention to the miniature life that surrounds us. These works are a celebration of a microscopic view of Clare’s garden, detailing the charm in the ordinary which we mostly overlook. Here Clare explains the process and inspiration of creating the works in her current show.

She Hides in the Ginkgo, and Weaves in the Night.

I thought I needed to escape. A yearning to leave behind stories in the news of a changing climate, of war, and of nature being destroyed. My anxiety felt bigger than me. Run to the mountains, disappear into the desert, go and clean my mind in the ocean? I have a family I need to protect. I decided instead to sleep in my garden. Get to know another side of this place that calms me and is seemingly familiar. Meet her micro world and her nocturnal world, her star world and her weather world from a little tent on the lawn. So I disappeared into nature, in a tent, in my backyard for 31 nights.

I knew my garden, I worked in it and grew food and flowers in it. My husband and I were married in it. I played in the garden with our children, teaching them what I know, and I thought about the connection between what I planted, the animals that live here and those that visit, but this made me realize that I only knew my garden in a certain way. I knew it in daylight. I knew it in nice weather. I knew it at night time only to lock up the chooks or look for my pet rabbit. I knew it only with what my eyes could see. I decided to look closer and connect in a deeper way. This led me to sleep in it, to listen to and observe new things, to research my findings in books and online, to look daily at bits and pieces under my microscope and make a body of work about this little patch of land.

During my time in the garden I discovered so much, about my garden and about myself. It didn’t feel strange to head outside each night on my own. I was never scared. I watched the silent and enormous tiger slugs come out of the rock wall and heard their rasping tongues as they ate leftover dry dog food when I put them to my ear. I discovered an orb weaving spider who hides in the ginkgo each day and weaves through the night. I still visit her each night in awe and fascination of her patience and skill. She makes a new web, perfect and complex, every night no matter the weather. I discovered that she changes the size of her web from over half a metre to the size of a tea plate depending on her needs. She fascinates me.

I wondered how much I miss by living under a ceiling, inside walls. How many starry skies and storms have I slept through? Did I really know how a full moon’s light makes our garden look, and how pitch black a moonless night is? How close the lightning storms feel when you are laying in a tent? I didn’t know how quickly the crickets would take shelter from the rain (which was under my tent) and continue their song.

The competing noises of suburbia and nature each night wove another layer into this experience. Everything seemed louder when I was outside alone. Dogs barking, truck brakes, crickets purring, possums fighting, distant voices and music, repetitive frogs and owls. All contribute to the soundtrack of my garden. Then I thought about all the silence around me. Layers and layers of my observations, questions, thoughts, feelings and findings went into drawings and paintings, sculptures, stitching and writing to draw this body of work together.

I wanted to know more about some of the invertebrates and plants that I discovered. I read books at night in the tent about earwigs, slugs and spiders. I photographed them with my SLR or my microscope camera. I was intrigued by the way that lichen swelled up before my eyes when wet under a microscope. The beauty in the tiny bits of debris left in a spider’s web after its meal is finished. Each day I would potter around the garden collecting leaves covered in aphids or dead insects from window sills or spent flowers or spider casings and examine them under the microscope. From this tool I was able to get a glimpse of how complex everything around me really is. The patterns on the wing of a fly look like a river system or an aerial view of suburbia. The glistening beads of pollen smothering the anther of a flower, the hairiness of a spider and its eight eyes all staring in different directions; just how hairy and silky and beautiful every moth is. Everything I looked at gave me inspiration. These amazing details were everywhere I looked.

My time in the tent and with my microscope led to this new body of work. Layers of observations, questions, thoughts, feelings and findings went into drawings and paintings, sculptures, stitching and writing. I want you to share my experience of the extraordinary universe that exists under our very noses. On our window sill. In our backyards. I read once that new species to science are now just as likely to be discovered in our gardens as in the rainforest or ocean. I hope my work gives you the chance to encounter this amazing world. It is just at your doorstep!