Seven Point Six Million

I produced this series during the pandemic, and each painting was designed using custom lettering that I created at that time. Each artwork spells a message; The painting to the left spells out ‘7.6 Million’ which was the number of Australians in 2020 that were originally born overseas, many of whom had been separated from their home countries and families for almost two years due to Australia’s border closure policies.

The following panels in the series say the number ‘7.6’ once, twice, and eight times. This symbolises the ideas of both repetition (Groundhog Day) and rapid manifestation, concepts which were very prevalent in our society during the pandemic. I painted each triptych three times in different colour ways to emphasise these concepts.

The colour palette used references what happens when you separate white light into the three primary colours (red, green & blue) and overlap them to create the secondaries (cyan, magenta & yellow), and is an analogy for separation creating a rich spectrum of emotions. This piece was a homage to those who were suffering from separation grief, and hopefully offered a little bit of colourful comfort and hope.