Artist statement

Seven years ago, I first came to Konstepidemin to write a novel based on Sophora toromiro, the ‘Easter Island tree’, a rare specimen of which is held in Gothenburg Botanical Gardens.  The tree is extinct in the wild and numerous attempts have not yet been successful in coaxing it to take root and flourish on Easter Island.

On 14th February 2024, I will send the completed novel, a contemporary feminist epic, to an agent.

In the next months and weeks of this residency, I reinhabit the unfolding story in the hope of pruning, nurturing, and tending to it, so that it might one day flourish in the hearts of its readers.

Short Bio:

Elizabeth Sercombe is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, researcher and facilitator, whose work continually inhabits questions and experiences of being and becoming.  Significant artistic projects include Artist: Existence Visibility Voice (2020) and pianoforte (2022-present).  She is the author of Strange Adventures:  Women’s Individuation in the Works of Pierrette Fleutiaux (Peter Lang: 2016), which explores and expands contemporary narratives of human transformation and leadership through the lenses of Jungian psychology and Beauvoirian Existentialism.  In her community and human transformation consultancy, she collaborates with leaders to grow vision, capacity and depth through their work.