Arlene is inspired by the temperate and tropical forests she has visited. These magnificent plants dominate the landscape, generating enormous presence. She marvels at such complex, living, breathing macrosystems, which contribute considerable beauty and benefit. Forests establish astonishing, diverse environments, each tree a unique entity of structure, age, colour, attractiveness and interest, each reaching high for the light while providing biodiversity under the canopy. Arlene is intrigued how both human intervention and powerful natural forces—such as flood, fire, disease and logging—can destroy forests, affecting the landscape for decades; dieback produces new skeletal forms, bushfires open up the landscape revealing new vistas and regeneration. Forests continuously offer a cornucopia of possibilities to both the observer and the interpreter.

Rosemary is attracted to Australian native forests with their undergrowth of shrubs, ground covers and other minutiae without which ecosystems could not function. These forests, however, also appeal to logging companies that tend to clear fell the vegetation and burn the unwanted results.  The devastation caused by deforestation is one source of her work. She is fascinated by the tracings of seasons, growth patterns, insects, birds and human marks on trees, barks, trunks, stems and the chainsaw cuts on felled or fallen trees