Louis Buvelot is painting. It’s a quarter past

midday and you wouldn’t know out here unless

you looked at the sun but Louis doesn’t look

at the sun because he’s squinting at the trees.

A mammoth gust of wind blows a twig onto the

canvas. It lodges itself in a glob of oil paint. Louis

picks out the twig with his thumb and forefinger.

It messes up a branch of his painted eucalypt.

There’s something else stuck to the grass in the

foreground. It looks like a tooth; human or

animal, Louis doesn’t know. He picks it out but

once he’s done that he sees another appear.

And another. Louis goes on picking out teeth

until finally he pulls a whole skull out of his

canvas. He tosses it away and puts the finishing

touches on the landscape. Calls it The Clearing.