Karlee Rawkins: True Blue

Karlee Rawkins’ forthcoming exhibition, True Blue, uses depictions of Australian fauna to explore themes of strength and resilience and to question our cultural values and relationship with nature. Through layers of underpainting and diverse mark-making, Rawkins creates a visual ambiguity between animal and landscape. This confluence highlights the complex issues of authenticity and contradiction that shape the relationship with the natural world. There is a unique and rugged quality to Australia’s wildlife and landscapes. The artist was drawn to the potential to convey a sense of survival. These animals—and ourselves—are both vulnerable and resilient. On a recent trip to K’Gari (Fraser Island), the artist had the privilege of seeing dingoes up close, and has since completely fallen in love with them. There’s so much misunderstanding around dingoes. The landscape they inhabit there is extraordinary—they’re truly wild, yet human presence has led to complications. The dingo is a native species with cultural significance to First Peoples. As an apex species, genetically distinct from domestic dogs, the dingo plays a critical role in a healthy ecosystem. The idea that ‘wild dogs’ are a problem that need to be controlled is deeply harmful. These new works continue Rawkins’ exploration of transformation and change and seek to represent and document these processes through the act of painting