Max Miller The mountain and me

The birds have vanished into the sky,
and now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

- Lo Po, 701–62

The Southern Highlands in NSW is alive with diverse birdlife, insects and animals as well as wonderful variants in the landscape, which I love to draw and paint.

Working on four panels of Fijian cedar, I coated it with burnished gold leaf then painted using egg tempera, made by adding colour pigments to golden yolks from our chooks, which gives it a warm, soft quality. I have drawn on various influences, from 15th-century Flemish artist Jan van Eyck to painters of the Italian Renaissance.

- Max Miller, 2016