CHICHIJIMA TOADS
These paintings represent the culmination of a documentary photographic exercise undertaken on Chichijima, a remote island in the Pacific Ocean. Corpses of cane toads, (Bufo marinus - an introduced species) litter the road on mornings after heavy rain. The toads come out into the open on wet evenings to mate, but are struck by cars in the dark. Their awkward sprawled shapes, flattened to the tarmac, desiccate in the hot sun and re-hydrate in the rain making them alternately fresh then dry due to their hydrophilic skin. Utterly fascinating to anyone not appalled by their gruesome viscera and broken bodies.