Sue Lovegrove: The Book of Trees at Beaver Galleries blends art styles

A Muraqqa is a codex where Persian miniature paintings are combined with Islamic calligraphy to create an illuminated narrative. In the late 10th century, the great Persian poet Ferdowsi commenced writing the Shahnama, or The Book of Kings, the longest epic poem in the world dealing with the history of the Persian empire from the beginning of the world through to its conversion to Islam.

The Tasmanian-based painter Sue Lovegrove, who is well-known for her paintings of the wilderness and such micro details as the patterns made by grasses in the sand, silhouetted branches and nests, has become obsessed with Persian miniatures. She has obtained a quantity of sheets of old Persian miniatures, covered with calligraphy, which you can find in quantity in any Middle Eastern souk or junkshop, and has appropriated them for her own purpose.

Instead of celebrating the great kings of Persian history, she celebrates the great trees of Australia, predominantly gums, but also including the silver wattle and the pencil pine. For Lovegrove, The Book of Trees represents a commemoration of trees that once flourished in Australia and went back to pre-colonial times and now stand as ghostly reminders and sentinels to that which once existed.

Lovegrove has studied the art of classical Persian miniature painting and faithfully reproduces on the old paper traditional ornamental borders with their vivid blues, reds and pinks, and striking areas of gilded shiny gold leaf. These borders, that many of us would associate with Persian carpets, create frames within which she has painted in a western European illusionistic style the trees which are the hero images of each illumination. The paintings are startling in the manner in which they combine different conventions of art making and it is within this sense of disjunction that the image of the tree appears like a haunting relic or totem.

Lovegrove writes in her catalogue note: "On one hand the paintings are about a meeting of two entirely different cultures, while also quietly suggesting that if we are not careful these trees that are almost as old as the tradition of manuscript illumination, that are so familiar to us, will only be known in the future through historical manuscripts."

A painting such as The Book of Trees No.15, River Red Gums (Eucalyptus Camaldulensis), Flinders Ranges, SA revisits the heritage of both Hans Heysen and Albert Namatjira, where the gnarled and slightly erotic twisting flesh-coloured forms of the trees contrast with the painted ornamentation and the swirly written calligraphic gloss.

In The Book of Trees No.1, White Gum (Eucalyptus Viminalis), Maria Island, Tasmania and The Book of Trees No.5, White Peppermint Gum (Eucalyptus Pulchella), Pelverata, Tasmania, Lovegrove creates a shrine-like space in which the tree becomes an object of veneration. In her art, nature is placed on a higher pedestal than the kings and conquerors of the past.