Tree near Upper St

I'm painting a tree in a lane for Melody and this is it so far... 

It's a big linen canvas(around 1.4x1.15 metres in size)

 

 - I found a cheap way to make good timber canvas stretchers so I celebrated by buying some unprimed linen. Once prepped* it takes paint more cleanly than cotton because it doesn't pill at all, but therefore it also doesn't form an impermeable barrier to size and primer.)

 

A bit more green - its hard to see the difference in photos now as I finish it, perhaps a HDR image format would help with that. My cameras have a cheat where it takes 3 exposures, for dark, light and in the middle, which might work with a static image like this as long as I use a tripod
 

After another visit to the spot its looking more finished - I've been meeting a few of the people who live just there. 

Max and Alison were wondering about the painting, if it was for sale. And whether I will be putting a magpie in scene. It's a commission but I'd be happy to paint a scene with a tree for them. I mentioned the parliamet of Birds I'm working on back at the studio, which has a pair of magpies in it. And maybe I'll add a magpie or 2 here as wll. In the tree or foraging on the rad -  which still looks a bit empty.

 I also met a musician from next door - I'll have to find out his name when I take the painting back there one last time for a final check and retouch.

First there's stuff to finish from yesterday

 

 

 

The painting after a session where I took it up to the lane its based on

 

 

painting green into the foliage...
 

 

 

With most of the painting except the leaves are all weird shadowy purple

 

 

 

 

I went back to the lane today to complete the composition. There's aheap left to do, lots of foliage etc, but it looks like fun. I think I'll do some at home especially if its wet, and also get back on site once or twic more
 

 Blue sky on the lane (painted with the assistamnce of photos I took a few days ago. It was damp and cloudy today. I'm hoping it will be dry enough to go up to the spot soon

 

 

 

After the first day I had a bunch of photos and stopframe video(before I left the tripod on the bus on New Years eve) including of a car on jacks being worked on), so I went off home to keep working from the video screen, and to prepare myself for the next time I go out there - maybe this afternoon
 

 

 

This is after the first day painting this beautiful gum tree in a yard off a lane in Forest Lodge(or maybe Glebe). I started it of on site and will return as often as possible. Its about 6 short blocks from my studio, without much up or down

 

 I've got some stop frame video I'll probably add to my youtube channel later

 

I might even create a playlist of stopframe videos of working on paintings on location

This is just the start, I'll continue with a combination of working at home from photos and memory, and going back over there. It's only a few blocks away. There's a drawing of the same tree here from a couple of weeks ago.

 

*Preparing canvases.

I'll go into this more another time with some video I've been shooting with Julie O'Brien, but its very important for the longevity of a painting to do it properly.

What you will be painting with matters. The layers underneath should be done for the actual paint you will be using. I paint in oil paint , so my canvases - and anything else I'm about to paint on, is prepared so oil will stick to it. This basically means use oil all the way down, oil and water repel, and paint can peel where one goes over the other. So don't undercoat your oil painting with acrylic paint, even its (mis)labelled gesso

But there's just one problem: oil is an acid(stearic acid is animal fat, and its linoleic acid in linseed oil). Over time the acid oil paint will rot the (cellulose?) canvas if there is no barrier between them.

So before priming a freshly stretched 'loomstate'(ie unprimed) canvas with an undercoat, a thin glue 'size' is liberally sponged across it, then left sitting flat to dry. Traditionally this size is gelatine - rabbit skin glue. I'm thinking of trying it again but over the last 20 years I've been using thinned PVA glue, about 1 part PVA to 4 parts water(it should seem quite watery. and its important to use a decent quality glue that's not mostly emulsifier and thickener, like a lot of 'craft glues'. Add a drop or 2 of anti-fungal stuff for acrylic paint, whether its PVA or gelatine, or its possible for mould to slowly grow on the back, especially if you live in Nimbin or other humid environments

Then use an oil paint to prime. Some student brand whites are as good as some of the artist quality brands(looking at you Art Spectrum, whose white are too oily

for my liking. You can get an idea of the quality by weigh them up next to each other. White pigment is heavy.(esp ZnO but also TiO2 The better the paint, the heavier the tube. I often use more paint priming than executing the actual piece on top.

Paint from the tube is too thick to use directly. I mix it out with some turps(gum or mineral) or white spirit(=refined mineral turps) so the consistency is like icecream that's on the point of melting. That way its much easier to apply with both brush and roller

 Prepare a jar or jars the night before. I get about 2 m2 undercoating done on freshly sized canvas per 200ml Winton(the Winsor and Newton student brand) tube of Titanium white, and slightly less from the same volume of its oily competitor. 

Brexit has made Winsor and Newton paints much more affordable by smashing the Poms' exchange rate - but how long it can last I'm not sure. the paints themselves are made in France
 

Police Harassment, episode 123

 This afternoon (Saturday December 18, 2021) I helped Martin move his stuff to a smaller unit in a storage complex at Marrickville. After moving furniture, boxes and picture frames around for a couple of hours, mostly by trolley, Afterwards I was sweaty and a bit dehydrated, as my drink ran out half an hour in. It was a humid day, extra warm up under the single roof of the large warehouse. I could feel a bit of a toothache coming on

At about 1.30 or 2pm I headed into Marrickville Metro, close nearby, to get some juice, and a packet of ibuprofen. then walked diagonally through Enmore park to get to Enmore Rd on my route home. I sat down for a moment on some grass under a fig tree just off the path to have a couple of anti-inflammatories I'd just bought and drink some juice. I stopped at the lights at the side street on the northern side of the park.  When the cars had gone I crossed Llewellyn St and continued walking up the hill towards Enmore shops on Enmore Road. Perhaps the lights hadn't changed before I crossed but no traffic was coming, I looked.

Close to 100 metres up the road, at the next corner a paddy wagon pulled up, facing the wrong way, and one of a pair of smallish police officers gestured to me. I had to laugh a bit to myself, as I've been through this routine before. I was also bloody annoyed, for the same reason. They jumped out of their van to bale me up. You were just jay walking across that street.. Maybe that was true, the street is tiny and its the weekend. I asked them if they were making it up, if not why not do something straight away? I said I might easily make a complaint, as I'm sick of this shit. They said its all on video, so that's an extra motive to make one, as this encounter would be funny(if it weren't such blatant harassment)

What was I up - Moving things for someone

Where - at a storage unit in Marrickville

who for - none of your business,

I didn't tell them but he's an old artist I've known for decades, who's been given runaround by Houso. The old sandstone house he was living in Woolloomooloo hasn't been maintained so got riddled with termites(which 2 or more years later they haven't fixed. He's an old fellow in his 70s whose mother lived in the same house and  the Department of Housing is dragging the chain to force him out of that house where he'd lived for decades. The Libs dream of selling Woolloomooloo to their rich mates, and, more or less indirectly, themselves. Anyway Martin's got a heap of his artwork and books in boxes, and had just given in and moved a good amount of them into the much smaller single man's unit in Redfern he'd been shunted into. Now he was downsizing the storage unit(which the DoH have given up paying for apparently, to underline their message to Martin, you'll never get your house back)

I feel responsible a bit because I pointed out the termite damage in an old school hardwood slat wall when I put a couple of bookshelves together for him and realised the wall I was about to put one against was made of paint and papery remnants. There's a number of drawings of Martin elsewhere on the blog, but I'll leave it to the audience to use search to find them

I assumed they stopped me because I was wearing my Paranoia Club shirt, a gift from the band, a stylish black tee emblazoned with a skull and crossbones. I told them as much. From here they headed into the realm of pure unadulterated bullshit, in order to justify a search(so they reckon), so they say as well as jaywalking, you were wandering around in circles like you were confused, I suspect you're under the influence of illegal drugs. I laughed in his face and asked if they taught them to say that, and that they were harassing me as an attempt at intimidation. Making things up.

They pulled out the blue rubber gloves. MmHmm, S & M!

Would they been dumping those rubber gloves as a calling card when they were done? What? Would they be dumping those things to remind and intimidate  anyone else subjected to a sexual assault by them. Not harassment, don't make me laugh

Was he going to grab me by the balls like his colleague Bad Hutch (showing off to his partner Bad Starsky) when they introduced themselves to me before a similarly illegal and fruitless search in Glebe, one morning as I headed to a job with some drills and other tools and fasteners.

How disappointing for them, they didn't find anything, and perhaps belatedly realising the potential embarassment lurking in their video cameras, they made preparations to skedaddle. But just(LOL) to show who was boss they gave me a move-on order (to keep walking exactly as I had been before they interupted me

This Lane Maybe

 A possibility for the scene for a painting, a lane off Upper St, near Wigram Road in Forest Lodge/Glebe

Woodwork for Patrick

 Patrick has just moved into a nice but bland and featureless apartment in Balmain. But the lights good and its in a great location near Balmain Wharf(so I'll probably try to do a landscape or 2 in the area while I'm around there).

He's a fan of natural materials and not so keen on polluting crap like MDF(the synthetic 'Medium Density Fibreboard shit that degenerates but refuses to rot. it remains a mat of synthetic fibres forever in a compost heap, manufacturing or buying the shit should be made legally and financially untenable) which most cheapo modern desks and tables are made from.

He's a friend of James and Sabrina so after seeing my shelves and tables at Sabrina's I got the task of  replacing  bland featureless furniture made from pollution, and adding storage space using salvaged timbers, from the huge pile Shamus accumulated at my studio, so its not metabolised into CO2 and CH4, or burnt. Who knows how many Australian cedar staircases and doors and doorframes have gone to landfill, hardwood floors and roof frames when it could have made our furniture, instead we import cheap shit made from fossil fuels and industrial waste

 

 

 

The top filled with fake wood - sawdust and glue, but noy sanded yet

 

 

 

The assembled table, mostly, but without a bottom shelf or varnish

 

The same but with a cedar step balanced where it will be attached later as a shelf

 

 

 

This is the top of a table I'm putting together to sit a largish TV on - a couple of pieces of an oregon plank with a strip of  rainforest(?) hardwood slats between them as a bit of a contast.

 

(I'd thought of it as meranti but it doesn't split like meranti I've used before so maybe its from some other tree family. Meranti is about as specific as eucalypt though so who knows)

It's about 1.4 metres long and just under 50cm wide. The legs I've cut from some Australian hardwood about 40cm long so the top will be at about 43-44cm

 

 

Here it is upside down with some legs balanced on top of it. I'll make a frame holding the legs together out f more oregon pieces later - I'm not sure yet whether to attach them directly to the tabletop or just  balance it on top

 

 

Some sort of stringer out of what looks like a good quality pine(ie very different to the plantation radiata shit). I'll sand it a bit more than start collecting some more offcut pieces to inlay and fill the slots as part of a table(?)

 

I'm starting with some basic stuff, a shelf to store laundry stuff in the bathroom, and replacing a dowel and retouching the French Polish on some cabinets that will be bedside dressers. From there I'll move on to a coffee/TV table.

 

 

The Laundry Shelf finished, varnished witha couple of thin coats of polyurethane

 

 

This Cabinet I replaced one of the dowels in the front door(the lightest one)

 

 

Its matching pair with the shellac retouched(on the top and doors

 

 

The shelf with one coat of (polyurethane) varnish

 

 

It's underside, also half done

Charles Freyberg's Crumbling Mansion

Here is some video of Charles Freyberg performing poetry from the Crumbling Mansion, his new book of poems, as he sends it into the world

 Here he is meditating, getting ready to perform as Marguerite warms up on the piano behind him

 Catch him live again this sunday afternoon ( 12 December ) at 4pm, at the Press Book Club at 262 Hunter St Newcastle. Get a signed copy of the Crumbling Mansion while you are there(a steal at $15, half what you will pay Ginninderra Press for one). Check out the facebook event here

 Here are a few clips of him performing at el Rocco las Sunday afternoon, there's plenty more on my youtube channel

 

 

 Trickster Spirits

 

 

APM

 APM is a job network profiteer provider.

As an artist the dole has been both support and hindrance through my working life.  I went onto the NEIS program, a small biz startup program in early 2020, signing on after a 3 month course (provided, but of course,  by the same outfit who had shunted me into the program through shifty manoeuvres, lies, and breaches of the socialk security guidelines they supposedly are bound by, written up el)as speculation mounted as to when a pandemic would be declared.

I was bounced without warning or apparent justification from that program(and cut off benefit entirely as my claim was marked 'completed' early in the NSW lockdown in July. I'd beenfulfilling the requirements - to work on and promote a set of big landscapes.

Which brings us to APM. Now we are 'living with COVID" the job network has been finding all the unattached Newstart recipients(ah, the Orwellian jargon of Centrelink, cachink) and I have been attached to them.

Its not hard to see what the primary purpose of this business is when the phone answers with the joyfilled house psalm "if the reason you are calling is that your Services Australia payment has been suspended and you need to make an appointment to be reconnected, press 1 now" oh wow what a fake-happy advertising voice that apparently female robot has, I think I'll hang up and call back to listen a few more times.

So I did my first appointment with JJ on the phone, my nickname from when I was 6 (Goodtimes!) and then texted "Approved" to the parcel of coercive documentsemails they laughingly call a contract, as directed. I couldn't help but send an extra reply asking if they were Alan Tudge's work, given he was minister at the time he was having an erm, allegedly abusive and unequal relationship with his spokesperson, and I'd love to see a court rule these things weren't coercive and abusive also.

So I've been cut off and must ring them back and then straightaway press 1 (oh yes!). I think I'll put it off for a day or so while I get a thing or 2 done. Of course right now a bit of paid not-work has come in, a commission worth a month of dole and also a couple of smaller things. But because they're art commissions, and not 'work' they likely will stand for nothing and actually I'll have to jump extra hoops for having the audacity. At least not being employers they can'yt demand their identity so they can't ring and harass them. The one time I did let them know about a small mural I was doing while up the coast visiting my daughter, I'd regularly got a few hundred $ from the former head of Nambucca Chamber of Commerce who'd rattle the tin around local businesses to pay various artists to brighten up the town. After the dole or job network called him I never heard from him again. 

 

The outcome of all this is that I have picked up a recorded breach because I had not made 20 job applications through their online form in the first 2 days I was connected to this outfit. Old mate JJ immediately and apologetically reconnected me but the record of a breach remains(which brings us back to the purpose of the business . Are there quotas? Do the staff receive breach and churn bonuses? Or just the management and shareholders?)

So my next contact with these disreputable jokers is supposed to be today, 22 december '21, at 9am. Because of the omicron outbreak(I suppose) I got 2 notifications yesterday for 2 interviews at the same time today, one in Burwood, and one by phone. So how's that? Breach guaranteed! A nice earner for the damned.

They didn't call me at the designated time of 9 am so after a few minutes I rang the number in the notification.

Hooray!

Back to "if the reason you are calling is that your Services Australia payment has been suspended and you need to make an appointment to be reconnected, press 1 now". By now I am well aware of the purpose of this foreign owned business(who donate to both major parties. The price of entry in this sector! Thou shalt donate to the Liberal party)

All other calls press some other number to land in a secondary menu and queue(ie what kind of prospectively cut-off Services Australia beneficiary are you?). After joining the Newstart queue and listening to some horribly distorted cheese music for 5 minutes I was informed that all phone operators are busy, leave my details and they may call back. 

so 2 breaches near guaranteed....?

Or maybe not, I got a cancellation text around the time of my 2nd attempted call, an hour after the scheduled time, "sorry for any inconvenience". Same to you!

If I wasn't wasting my time thinking about this I might be painting! On this Parliament of Birds for example or the large street view I'm about to get started with.

 

Mr Cat

 Studio resident Mr Cat has been the longest of all of us all. There' a lot of comfy perches where he can watch the world go by

 

 

There's nothing like a warm stereo amplifier

Painting and model