Roma McLaughlin (Australia)
Title: Inutillus Herba (Latin for useless grass) 2021
Medium: White acrylic on linen
Size: 21 x 29cm
Price: AU$350
Roma is a contemporary papercut artist working in Melbourne, Australia. Her work is inspired by the ancient Chinese craft of papercutting. To make her images, Roma uses a single sheet of paper and a scalpel to cut out shapes to create silhouettes and patterning. Currently using only white paper, she is working on a series of papercuts about the shoreline of the Southern Ocean of Victoria.
‘Inutillus Herba’ could be the beginning of a new series of papercuts based on her close observation of the natural world in her (new) backyard.
INUTILLUS HERBA (Latin for useless grass)
Are you medicinal
Herbs or weeds?
Springing up in my lawn
Again.
‘Dear Garden,
Weeds have triumphed over you. I could have maintained you better, I know, but I am spending more time these days working in my studio.
I planted most of your trees, herbs and shrubs. You have given me so much pleasure watching you grow through the seasons.
I am moving away soon, and I know that you and the house will be replaced by a concrete apartment block. In future, there probably will be no room here for a garden.
Or weeds.
Garden, I will miss you.’
For Inutillus Herba (AKA weeds) I picked a number of different leaves from my lawn which included dandelion, clover and violet and arranged them on my scanner, photographed them, then created a patterned silhouette composition in Photoshop. This I painted onto my piece of linen for The Garden of Loss and Triumph project.