The Ausorigins creating art from old growth wood story

Inspirations for creating the art that we do!

My wife Tracey and i are both passionate about two things, our Australian environment and creating art through words or art pieces.

Our quest started with one of our treks into the Australian bush, forest that had been through a bush fire only months before.

the-start-of-the-ausorigins-collecting-story-walking-through-the-bush-after-a-bush-fire

This area of S/E Victoria was once full of spectacular old growth forest but this area has been harvested several times over the last 100 years.

What we saw that day hiking through this area was that little remnants of the old growth forest still remained, sitting on the forest floor were old grand trees in the final stages of decomposing and dissapearing for ever.

The thought of this forest forever being gone made us both sad to think of it.

This is when we decided to do something about it and try to save those last pieces of our past before they were gone forever.

So our two loves became one and we started on the road to discovery.

We started to scour maps to find the area’s of Australia that had been logged, still had undisterbed area’s that still had remnants of old growth timber and where we could legally go and collect material for our artworks.

We zero’d in on some really promising places and started to meet the locals as most of the good area’s to find appropriate stuff was private property.

This did lead to a few challenges though!

meeting-the-locals

Country people are just a fantastic lot and once we told our story, most of the property owners were fantastic in letting Tracey and i roam through their forstst collecting the rotting wood from the forest floor.

This also led to meeting some more of the locals as well.

meeting-more-of-the-locals

Collecting our old growth wood that we use in our pieces has involved driving thousands of kilometeres and hiking through acres and acres of forest with our faithful Kelpie Viking in tow.

searching-through-acres-of-bush-with-our-kelpie-viking-in-tow-to-find-the-perfect-pieces-for-our-art-worksIt also means lots of trips back to the car carrying fragile bits of old Australian forest, wrapping them carefully and storing them away for the long drive home.

our-kelpie-viking-recovering-from-a-long-walk-and-an-ever-longer-driveOnce we had enough raw material to work with we then had to work out what to do with it, how to preserve this precious wood.

See what we do with the wood to preserve it for our art works HERE

Once we found our formula to preserve and make art from old growth wood, we knew that we had to make art that was unique and showcase the wood to the best effect.

See our Old Growth Forest Original Artworks Gallery HERE

We combined our love of exploring our natural bush and forests with our collecting of rocks and fossils. We have combined the two to create unique hand made feature pieces that not only highlight the grain and character of the old growth wood, but also the Crystal structure and grain of Australian Quartz.

We hope that you enjoy our work and have a look at our gallery we are adding pieces to our collections, so don’t forget to check back every now and then.

Peter and Tracey

ausorigins-artists-peter-and-tracey