Vavara Beyond Memory is animated from original photographs taken in St Petersburg in 2004.
 I have used these as a basis for producing stills for an exhibition shown  at the Karen Woodburry Gallery in Melbourne in 2004.
 
The photos were  heavily worked on  in Photoshop  in conjunction  with  scans of old Russian paintings and a heavy use of the pressure stylus for painting  on to the images.
It was a logical step to then  animate these heavily layered  images
 
I have concentrated on creating an atmosphere of softness, that is dreamy and romantic .    It is a work that has evolved intuitively with the intention to expand what I had  already produced in the  original exhibition of the same name .
 
Vavara  is a journey through memory , both real and genetic .   It is about the  displacement  of my family through time and as  immigrants to Australia .  And also about the displacement of a culture. The Russian Czarist  regime displaced by Communism .
 
Snow features strongly as it is a symbol of the seasons changing and the cleansing of the  earth and of our psyches.  Snow is  strongly  identified with  the Russian Winter Landscape . It is foreign to any Australian Urban Winter landscape.