Wednesday, May 31, 2023

Tree

 
 This is close to finished now. The big figtree (and most of the left of the painting) is from the little cliff between the spit leading to Lady Macquarie's Chair and Woolloomooloo Bay . Other elements are from Forest Lodge by Minogue Crescent or made up. 
 
 
finished, with the frame before I attached it
 

 
 

 

 
Representing my struggle






 
 

 

 
Something Im working on as a ccommission





 

Thursday, May 18, 2023

Tree Trunks and other Drawings

 
I'm about to paint a fig tree emerging from a cliff, so I've been doing a few drawings to prepare


 
A whale in a cliff face

 
Damo carving stone on the street, just before COVID

 
Nitsy, another old drawing

 

Sunday, May 7, 2023

More Threats

2 days before I moved out, ie on April 18 this year, a few friends came by to celebrate what we had created in the Junkyard, and commiserate on its demise. Andy invited himself in.On being questioned by one of us on why he was blowing the place up in the way he was, creating ill will all round. He responded by calling us all, and everyone else but him a bunch of cunts because we wouldn't bend to his will.


I told him is he  wanted to call us all cunts he could do it in his own room(with his friends (whoever they are). He was furiousat being told bluntly he's not my boss and returned to his cave to sulk, after some threats

 

On May 5 I went to retrieve a third ute load of my things with Ben Cahill.


Mr P had started stacking garbage furniture in front of my stuff, just as he has been obstructing Shamus in collecting trucks of timber by eg blocking the top of the lane with the repaired fork lift, claiming the electrics, hydraulics etc don't work, though it starts miraculously first time when he wants(he has admitted contriving this this day). I'd got the basis of a load out on the sreet before he came up to threaten me with stealing my stuff, despite an agreement for at least 28 days made a few days earlier, he was going to lock me out. I was a bit disconcerted and accidentally broke the rollerdoor lock as I opened it. Oh dear!


He was inflamed to discover this accident and came out to make further threats that I'd better go or get a belting from this trained killer. 


The next day(ie yesterday) I came over to help Shamus load timber and give him a heavy epoxy and hardwood kitchen bench that Andy had dumped on a fine piecework dining table.By now he had dumped rolls of ripped up carpet and other shit in front of everything, as part of his self appointed cross-bearing routine. He knew I was giving the table to Shamus before he strained every idiot sinew to make work for himself and lunk it inside. Fucking other people around is the only pleasure

 

I started tossing this crap into the back corner I had cleared the day before so Shamus and I could get it outand he started screaming about making a mess(!). Foolishly I walked out of the room into the front loading dock. After quickly locking us oute followed us out to make threats such as he was gunna give me a good punch in the head, glaring at me from a foot away in an effort to intimidate before skulking around the back to lock himself in

Psycho 'Art Patron'

 I was helped to set up in the studio I have just left in Forest Lodge years ago(sep 2016) by a British Paratroop Captain(ret from 3 Para), disgraced and deported to Australia some years ago.For a couple of years it was supported by an el cheapo ArBnB dosshouse he organised, until he burnt his bridges with that outfit with his inflexibility and abuse. He considers himself superior to most other people( except those he adulates - like Dr Pot).


From the start I knew I was dealing with a borderline personality through my experiences at a country boarding school. I decided to give it a chance because I was living in a spare room and had no space to work. The shouting and bullying and general standover tactics were something I had to deflect or drown out, the price I paid for 'free space' - being the imagined plaything of this officer with no squaddies. This went on to 2020. I sooned learned to do any work when he was not present to avoid the headache inducing passive aggressive cursing about everyone else wasa a fuckwit and he was the martyr who did everything( and currently confecting invoices for the 'ex-gangster'(I'm a businessman now) mate he has become an appendage of.  For ~15 years this bloke was beneficial owner of the property, collecting the rent, until the dodgy transfer of title to his vehicle was overturned in the Supreme Court of NSW where he is still fighting in Equity over how much he pretends to have invested in the property, a near derelict house attached to an old industrial site. Andy-boy is what Albert calls him, a man of 60, and yet Andy imagines this guy will help him

 

Andy was an aficionado of the street landscapes I was painting terming them 'Urban Pastoral' for whatever reason, he had a high opinion of himself as a critic, and claimed he would sell my work, something it emerged he had very little idea of how to do. Still the studio space and host of materials, especially timber stacks out back, maybe it a good studio, especially when he wasn't there and it was possible to relax


Then COVID came along, and in a fit of madness, he got himself imprisoned for obtaining a lump of gold by deception. He had previously proposed to set a valuation of my work via a sham transaction with some dodgy businessman of his acquaintance -  something I wouldn't and won't go along with, as it would taint my work, and bring me no income in any case.


His period of incarceration was a blessed relief for the rest of us, peace and quiet and an opportunity to work. I sorted and stored his stuff in a loft in the kitchen, protected by a tarp.


Last August he got out and came and camped in our loungeroom, straight outside my daughters door, mooching there for the next several months. By December this sometimes naked old man outside her door was wearing on her mental health, unsurprisingly, as he was constipating the whole house. I asked how much longer he was going to camp there. So he stood over his friend Tony, taking his room, and the rentbook, and bided his time till when he could play King Shit.


In early March I went to my mother's in Newcastle for a few days he used the opportunity to turn th house upside down, clearing the kitchen so he could indulge his stainless steel fetish, and dumping the top of the a homenade table in my studio with great heaps of other shit, and the base up on the street. He has no consideration or understanding of others, except as pawns in his crackpot schemes, and an exaggerated concern for his own delicate sensibilities. Disturbd at hisdisrespect for other people and their property and lack of concern at disturbing everyone else, Xantharea mentioned the POLICE, Andy's deep fears were aroused and he evicted her. He is on Parole.


He went to the same school as Rishi Sunak, Winchester, another alumnus for them to be proud of.


His intimidating graceless manner also made my other flatmate Stuart decide to leave. He expected my loyalty to him over my daughter. Pfft! Up to this point I had been prepared to make excuses for him, and tolerate him to a degree. No more.


We had a blow up - hardly the first - but this time he ended it by threatening me with violence if ever I raised my voice at him again. The next day he was back barging in my door pretending he was my mate. No apology of any sort. Ive never heard him admit wrong.


A week or 2 later he gave me notice till the end of April, falsely claiming we had all been given our marching orders. The place was clearly unravelling but I had jumped come off a longterm painkiller habit and needed time to pack and had no physical energy until a few days before I left.He was barging around everywhere, having taken on the former owners liability for all the shit(sandstone blocks parking in a 3 wheeled useless forklift) dumped in the lane, creating sham invoices he'll never be paid. (They are claiming $6000 for a 'kitchen renovation' in 2020 where we moved a different electrically unsafe but satinless steel fridge inside) He invited me to join in this futile potentially fraudulent activity


(to be continued)

Monday, May 1, 2023

Train door

 

Waiting for the Newcastle train at central a few months ago
 

 
 


Straggly Geranium

 
Some painting from Mum's that I forgot to upload a few months ago