Woolloomooloo Map - the Gunnery

An aerial view of Woolloomooloo, portal to a 3D virtualisation of the Gunnery that Marcus Gillezeau has another artist creating - details coming soon. In the meantime check out Jasper Cool's 7 minute Gunnery Sizzle on Vimeo, for a taste of the Gunnery artists community of 1985-91

 

 

the painting finished. 

This is a handheld shot from the middle of the flooding rain in Sydney when the light was dim, so it's maybe a bit blurry, and you can see the smear left across the bay by a drip falling between camera and canvas. When the rain finally stops in a day or 2 I'll reshoot more precisely

You can follow its creation in the images below

Still a lot of mistakes and bits to fix  or finish but I'll take a break for a bit to get a few other things done and defrag my brain a little

 

 

 

It looks almost done with the greens and other colours in the foliage brought in, and some light and shadow to give a bit of depth. A lot more repairs can be done yet, and some will,  "finishing it" is like iterating over Zeno's paradox. So after a bit of work on railway tracks and boats, I'll take a break for a few days
 

 

 

Adding green and highlighting light and dark, and making lots of repairs

 

 

 

 

All blocked in now, though with plenty of errors, whole blocks misplaced etc. (I'll leave it to others to catalogue them). And water in the harbour over the red mud.

 

 

 

There's a few completely empty blocks and missing lanes, and everything's still in unnatural colour but there's paint spread over most of the surface now of  kinda recognisble map

 

 

 

 

 

AThe beginnings of an aerial view of Woolloomooloo Bay centred on the Gunnery, the former artists squat where I started out. Its for an intro sequence to a Gunnery 3D virtualisation

 

The Harbour from Watsons Bay

I went back down to Watsons Bay to try to finish this view of the harbour. This is the third time I'd taken the canvas there. Earlier versions are here

 

 Stopframe video compresses 100 minutes of painting to 40 seconds. Funny

Kitchen Garden

A painting I started when I was at mum's over the weekend. I'll do some more to it in a couple of weeks when I'm there next

 Here's some stopframe animation of me painting. It was shot at one frame per 5 seconds and compresses an hour and a half into 43 seconds. It's hilarious to watch, at least for me. I'll be doing some more of this stuff

 

I've created an instagram account where I'm going to post images of my finished artwork, in contrast to this blog, which attempts to give a blow by blow account of work in progress, good, bad and ugly. So you'll always see it here first!

I'll start with a breach of policy though!, making this animation the first entry before trawling back through the blog for a few hundred finished pieces and images from last few years

 

 

 

Junkyard Gym

Caspian has set up a gym In the space we've cleared among  the timber piles out back and he and his mates are using it to work out. Damo is the character shadow boxing in the foreground. Damon is a stone mason who lived here a year or so ago

 Nearly finished and heavy rain has set in for the next few days so I've unstrapped this largish canvas(1200x1200mm) from the easel it was on so it could come nside to the big monitor to fix a few things that have been cleared away in the actual scene while I get started on a few new thngs - maybe some frames and possibly other woodwork. I've also got a heap of UV lamps to repair and/or finish.

There are a heap of photos showing the stages as this painting came together

  

I went back into the background purpl shadow, and maybe put it in a bit too much o the background

 

 

I've just returnd to this after a couple of weeks, starting with adding adding some flesh to Damo before completing the bricks and foliage and wood

 

 

I went over the mortar(again!) and put a bit more brighter colour on, especially greens

 

 

 

Damon poses with the painting

Everything keeps moving aroung as I paint, but now I've got a ground on the canvas I'm going to add some more colour, green

stopframed

 

 

 

Damo the stonemason shadow boxing

Damon roughed in to the composition. I did a mockup on the PC or a photo against the painting so far to check out just where I wanted to place the figure and make my life easier matting him in

 

 so many bricks...

I've always wanted to paint at least some of the timber racks here, now I am

 

 

 

 

 

The cat likes to watch, he's a bit of a critic

Hop vine / Carpark next door

I've been growing a hopvine on the new fence the neighbours at FDC built. It screens my studio and the communal space on and around the patio, and I can use it to flavour the beer I make. (It's a Saaz, pretty versatile, and the traditional hop for pilseners)

I started it a few weeks ago when a lockdown looked imminent. It didn't happen then, butthe conditions for another could easily arise in a matter of hours or days for another 6 months or so, so I'm ging to start a few studio paintings, and views from home while also getting back to my set of Sydney landscapes.

 

 

This is it so far under UV light, there's a few daylight pctures below

Kenzie

 

Brothers and Sister - Postcard of the Horatii

A portrait group I painted for Julie O'Brien of her cousins in New Zealand for Christmas in the year of COVID

 

 

The interlocking gazes in the photo I started with reminded me of the brothers in David's Oath of the Horatii somehow and the pic also had a Norfolk Island pine or some other Araucaria in the background, so I found a view with some more to stand in for the severe McDonald's arches in David's neoclassical allegory of duty and filial piety(and murder of siblings and spouses in their name - this is the Pacific version so there are no wailing women or terrified children).

 

 Pictorially the columns are kind of turned on their head - like the trick Marx pulled on Hegel. Living(and dead) trees, not polished stone columns create a dramatic angle, not holding it aloft but emerging from it underfoot!

Fun and games!

 

 

 

A portrait group I'm doing for Julie O'Brien of her cousins in New Zealand

 

The old Bushels factory

 

 

Thanks to Robert Smith who put me up at his place in Concord so I could start this view of the old Bushell's factory behind a mangrove tree in the river, and with one of the zillions of identical south Florida condos that cover the old factory sites of Cabarita

 

Peter Urquhart sings- Video at Anvil Rock

Pete got offered a slot in Carols by Candlelight, a fundraiser for Northern Irish childrens charity NSPCC. I got Charles Freyberg to drive me up to Blackheath at the top of the Blue Mountains.

Pete took us out to Anvil Rock where he read a story he was entrusted with in Arnhem land, the origin of the Morning Star, a tale of death and rebirth. Where we were sitting is a massacre site

He followed this with his song Brothers and Sisters accompanying himself on the viola. We were lucky that the afternoon was still, hardly a breath of wind over the peaks so the audio is good, and with the location it was easy to get good pictures

In the new year, after the show, I'll stick this up on my youtube channel and post a link here.

 

 

A painting from earlier in the year, showing the same view from nearby Govetts Leap