What might a healthy coastal ecosystem look like if native wildlife had the opportunity to thrive?

The coastal painting represents a wild southern South Island coastline of exposed rock, coastal vegetation, sea and distant headlands. It is deliberately painted from an impossible viewpoint: the viewer can look across a vast stretch of coastline while simultaneously discovering tiny plants and animals only centimetres away.

Hardy coastal plants including hebes, harakeke, cabbage trees, gentians, forget-me-nots and coastal button daisies create the varied vegetation of rocky shores, cliffs and coastal herbfields. Together they provide food, shelter and habitat for the smaller life within the ecosystem.

Hoiho / yellow-eyed penguin gives the painting its strong sense of place, anchoring it in the southern coast and reflecting the connection between healthy land and sea. The herbfield skink is deliberately tucked amongst the coastal vegetation, rewarding a closer look. The native bee represents the countless small relationships happening within an ecosystem, moving between flowers and contributing to pollination and the wider food web. Forget-me-nots and the other small coastal plants reinforce the idea that even the most exposed landscapes can be rich with life.

Underneath it all the flower of life pattern holds everything together, just like in a healthy eco system where all things play a part the pattern needs all the circles to be whole.