The natural history illustrator, Bronwyn Greive, has built her practise and research on noticing things most people don't.
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Her father came from Wales, she remembered on the eve of her new exhibition at Newcastle Library (which opens on Thursday in the Natural History Lounge on Laman Street). Perhaps it was that, she wondered aloud, that steered her towards what would become her life's pursuit and the subject of her years-long post-graduate study.
"He was always really good at taking overseas visitors around Newcastle," she said, "When people would ask what there was to see, he was very good at helping us see with those eyes that notice things other people don't."
The word Ms Greive uses to describe it is "endemophilia"; a deep positive emotion that we can feel for our home environments, and a kind of antithesis of nostalgia, which comes from feeling disconnected from home.
Think of it like this, Ms Greive offers: "One of the things that has bothered me for quite a while is that the Lower Hunter is often talked about in terms of coal production.
"And while we do have the world's largest coal exporting port, we also have this amazing environment.
"From the World Heritage area of the Barrington Tops to the internationally significant Hunter Estuary Wetlands; we have the largest moving sand dune system in the Southern Hemisphere.
"A lot of people might know one or two, but there is a whole collection.
"I wanted to see if I could use natural history illustration to help others fall in love with their local environment."
The coal export story started in Newcastle; the coal story of Australia basically started here ... but it's not the whole of our story.
- Bronwyn Greive
Ms Greive's exhibition, titled "More than Coal", is the culmination of her research and art - which takes the natural history illustration discipline and wanders through a variety of mediums - and coincides with the launch of her book on the same subject.
"I'm not what you would call a traditional illustrator," Ms Greieve said. "My work is a broad mix of mediums. I've never met a medium I didn't like." One of her works on exhibition is about five metres long.
The exhibition will launch tonight from 5pm at the Newcastle Library, with the Minister for the Hunter, Yasmin Catley, and is expected to run through March with workshops and associated events included.
"I'm trying to encourage people to visit these places," she said. "Helping others to create and connect to their local environment and fall in love with it."
The book - part research, part guide, part artistic inspiration - offers Ms Greive's collected research developed through her recently completed PhD study alongside a series of creative prompts that she says are intended for everyone from the committed to the lay artist to try.
"I'm trying to work against that (notion) people have that "I can't do that", "I'm not an artist". You don't have to be. We can all be creative and find joy in it and maybe it will help you fall in love with the local landscape."
The exhibition follows a general rise of "citizen science" in Australia that has become increasingly popular as the internet and tech accessibility opened up possibilities for the number and diversity of citizen science projects in the last few decades.
The Atlas of Living Australia - the CSIRO-hosted hub for Australian biodiversity data - has recorded as many as 62 million records submitted by citizen scientists since its launch in 2010, according to the The Royal Institution of Australia publication COSMOS in October.
Those records, it notes, can be used by researchers to "track species abundance and changes, and inform conservation".
"It connect with the rise in citizen science," Ms Greive said of her work, "And it connected with the research that shows creativity and creating is good of us on many levels.
"The coal export story started in Newcastle; the coal story of Australia basically started here ... but it's not the whole of our story."
Ms Greive will also host an artist meet as part of the same exhibition on Saturday, November 11, from 10am.