Forest Bathing is a series created for the solo exhibition at Campbelltown Arts Centre in June 2018. For the past 12 months, since rediscovering sumi e ink painting; I have been incorporating ink work into my creative digital photographic compositions. Viki Murray May 2018.
FOREST BATHING
Forest Bathing invites you along the tranquil pathway, away from the other world into the rejuvenating solace of the woods. Ambient bouquets of cedar, maple and moss permeate dream states long, long after the immersion in the velvety greens.Viki Murray’s digital artistry, combining sumi ink work and photography is a response to sensory replenishment through complete absorption in nature. Her ethereal imagery explores dream states, waking states and the spaces in between.
I went to Kyoto in 2017 with the purpose of taking pictures in ancient gardens, walkways and forests. Time spent in the primeval Kazugayama Genshirin forest, Nara, was transcendental.
To be dually drained and invigorated by intense humidity, visually drinking in the intoxicating greens of maple leaves and moss while inhaling the musky scent of cedar and damp earth was almost sensory overload. For the longest moments time stood still as I was engulfed in a silence, heaving with the loud presence of every pore of nature.
I knew then the kind of images I wanted to create, the visual tale I wanted to weave. Ironically it was only once back in Australia, chatting casually in a cafe about the cleansing beauty of the Japanese forests; I was introduced to the term forest bathing, or Shinrin Yoku”
