Painting in the Paint Shop - The Green Room

I've had to take a lot of time out from painting to look after my mum, but I've finally resumed painting in the Paint Shop in North Eveleigh, next door to CarriageWorks.
The Paint Shop was one of the North Eveleigh precinct’s 4 main buildings, along with the Carriage Works, Stores and the Chief Mechanical Engineer’s Office on Wilson Street. It is next to the much better publicized CarriageWorks building in North Eveleigh.

Starting my painting of E136 'The Green Room - Heritage Store, North Eveleigh' 2017 oil on canvas 36 x 46cm

$1800  

 Enquiries : janecooperbennett@gmail.com

Even though Eveleigh Carriage Workshops closed during the 1980s, a section of the Paint Shop remains in railway use today.The Paint Shop is owned by RailCorp and used by the Office of Rail Heritage to store heritage rolling stock and moveable relic collections. 

Starting my painting of E136 'The Green Room - Heritage Store, North Eveleigh' 2017 oil on canvas 36 x 46cm

It is the storage site of the heritage suburban electric fleet which are being painstakingly restored by the dedicated volunteers of Historic Electric Traction.

Starting my painting of E136 'The Green Room - Heritage Store, North Eveleigh' 2017 oil on canvas 36 x 46cm

$1800  

 Enquiries : janecooperbennett@gmail.com

Many companies have tried to lay claim to the huge slice of no man's land west of Redfern Station, and it really does have a slightly besieged air. 
The University of Sydney made a spirited attempt to add it to its empire and it was even recently touted as a potential home for Google's new Sydney headquarters before the NSW State Government poured cold water on the idea. 
The latest candidate seems to be Atlassian, as the jewel in the crown of yet another proposed technology hub (don't governments love 'hubs'! I don't know exactly what the difference is between a 'hub' and the more lowly category of mere 'business park', but I imagine it would be several hundred million dollars at the very least).
I know that some sort of redevelopment is inevitable, but how much of the heritage would be retained is still unclear.

Starting my painting of E136 'The Green Room - Heritage Store, North Eveleigh' 2017 oil on canvas 36 x 46cm  

 

$1800  

 Enquiries : janecooperbennett@gmail.com

 

The doorway under the stairs once led to the Store itself, where an old storeman once doled out supplies.
This corner of the Paint Store is painted a brilliant and venomous shade of green. The colour green now has vague connotations of health and nature, but a hundred or so years ago, it had a very different reputation.
This colour looks suspiciously like the notorious arsenic based 'Paris green' which was invented just after the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century. It was so toxic that ballgowns dyed with this bright and deadly pigment were reputed to kill their wearers if they stayed too long at the dance. Wallpaper painted with Paris Green was even supposed to have contributed to the final illness and death of Oscar Wilde. 
As though the arsenic and copper ingredients of the original formula weren't sufficiently deadly, some warped genius later added lead arsenate to the cocktail.
As this building long predates any health and safety rules my suspicions could be well founded. If you could overlook its one lonely drawback of being horribly poisonous, 'Paris green' is a very useful paint - bright, fairly stable, very opaque and giving good coverage.  It has been used to colour fireworks, and also to kill rats in the Parisian sewers; hence its name. And it kills mosquitoes quickly and effectively. What's not to love about a paint like that......  

In the theatre, a 'green room' is a waiting room for performers before, during and after the performance.

I feel that this quiet and neglected corner of inner Sydney will soon be the venue for a spectacular drama starring government, developers, community groups, universities and fabulously wealthy and powerful international companies. 

There will probably be fireworks.

And it could well become toxic.

Terminus Redux

I have mixed feelings about the renovation of the Terminus. Although it has been restored,not demolished and replaced by apartment blocks as so often happens, yet to me, it has been stripped of some of its poetry.

P286A 'Terminus Redux' 2017-8 ink, charcoal, pastel on paper 131 x 106cm

 Enquiries  : janecooperbennett@gmail.com 

I painted a large mixed media work on paper, as well as an even larger oil on canvas, just before the iconic vines were removed. The awning had been stripped back to a fragile skeleton, but the bricks had yet to be sand-blasted.
However well a place is renovated, inevitably there must be compromises between keeping the original character and making it a viable business.
No expense was spared on the fitout.The designers and architects have done their best to  restore the old pub building while retaining quite a lot of the original pub from tiles to timber. The pressed metal ceiling upstairs is a sympathetic replacement not the original, which was too badly damaged.  

 P286 'Terminus Redux' 2017-8 oil on canvas 122 x 183cm

Enquiries  : janecooperbennett@gmail.com 

I miss the vines which once covered the facade. They had probably been planted early in the 20th century by a CSR employee, as the same species of Virginia creeper covered the manager's residence and the courtyard of the 'Rum Store'.
Recently I attended the launch of Shirley Fitzgerald's wonderful book on the history of the Terminus. I was honoured that Shirley had asked me to contribute a photo of one of my paintings of the Terminus facing opposite its longtime companion and rival, the Pyrmont Point Hotel (aka the Royal Pacific).

P252 'The Terminus and the Point' 2011 oil on canvas 31 x 61cm

Private Collection : Sydney

Enquiries about similar paintings : janecooperbennett@gmail.com 

When I went upstairs, I almost walked into one of the walls, not from one too many cocktails, but because I had expected the hall that once led through to the building next door. I believe that this passageway had to be closed off due to updated fire regulations.

There is a typical pub menu, priced rather steeply, to cash in on the hipster ambience from  the 32 years that the Terminus spent as an icon of urban decay. Ironically, the few times that I had visited the Terminus prior to its closure in the early 1980s, they were giving out free food. Possibly this had contributed to its original decline and fall. The new owners certainly aren't making that mistake, but have possibly erred in the opposite direction.
It's also ironic that despite having kept the ghost sign outside, no Resch's is on tap. 

Ghost in the machine

I've been painting ghost signs in the Eveleigh Railway Workshops, as one by one, the relics of the past slowly vanish.

E119 'Ghost sign in the Large' 2017 oil on canvas 31 x 15cm

$330

Enquiries : janecooperbennett@gmail.com

There are faded sepia warning signs so old that they are handwritten.
Fire extinguishers have kept a quiet vigil, like forgotten sentries post battle.

E119A 'Ghost sign in the Large 2' 2017 oil on canvas 31 x 15cm

$330

Enquiries : janecooperbennett@gmail.com

 

So, what is the 'Ghost in the machine' ?
This phrase, so often used, yet little understood, was coined by the Oxford philosopher Gilbert Ryle to describe the Cartesian dualist account of the mind–body relationship. One of the underlying assumptions within the famous maxim of the French 17th century philosopher René Descartes, 'Cogito ergo sum' ('I think, therefore I am') is the notion that the mind is not only distinct, but actually separable from the body.

According to the philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), a person can be defined as ‘an intelligent being, having reason and reflection, which can consider itself in different times and places.’ By this definition, someone is defined as a person if they can think about themselves in the past, future, and conditional, and in a variety of different places. 
If a person has this quality of self-conscious recognition, what is the cause? Does consciousness reside in their body, their brain, or their ‘soul’? If that person has had a serious accident rendering them unconscious and without brain function -so that the body is still alive but the mind is no longer self-conscious nor could ever be again-Is the body still to be regarded as a person? If not, then how can the physical body alone be that which makes them a person?
If the Eveleigh Railway Workshops are emptied of most of their machines and other heritage items, how can they still be considered to be the Eveleigh Railway Workshops? How much can be removed, before it becomes an empty shell? When the contents of a container are removed, is it still a container?
What is a body without a mind or a soul?

More paintings of the Eveleigh Railway Workshops can be seen at my Eveleigh page on this blog.

Let there be rock

Starting my painting of the 'Excavation between Harris and Mount Streets, Pyrmont'  2017 oil on canvas 51 x 61cm

  $3,500

 Enquiries : janecooperbennett@gmail.com

Not far south of the Terminus Hotel, another formerly ignored and derelict site is being gentrified.
There was a 'no man's land' between Harris and Mount streets which was an overgrown wasteland, with the southern end used as a carpark for the past 3 decades.

P241B 'Panorama from the roof of Pyrmont Power Station - from Harris St, Mount St to the CSR Distillery' 1991 oil on canvas 31 x 61cm

  $2,000

 Enquiries : janecooperbennett@gmail.com

This is a small canvas I painted from the roof of the Chem-Lab of the Pyrmont Power Station in 1991, looking west towards the ethanol tanks of the CSR Distillery. In the centre is the handsome vine-covered Federation building that was once the house of the CSR Manager. The carpark can be seen to the right of the Manager's house.

Clumps of pampas grass used to poke through the badly laid bitumen, which was  covered with weeds and strewn with discarded bongs.
Only a brick pier wall facing Mount st and a tumbledown grafittied sandstone block wall remained above ground level as relics of the row of terraces once occupying that site. The terraces had been pulled down long before I started to paint in Pyrmont.

Starting my painting of the 'Excavation between Harris and Mount Streets, Pyrmont'  2017 oil on canvas 51 x 61cm

  $3,500

 Enquiries : janecooperbennett@gmail.com

The carpark has now been excavated, revealing the golden sandstone beneath. This is one of the few remaining still undeveloped sites in Pyrmont, and I took the rare opportunity to paint the honey coloured tones of the yellowblock sandstone before it is removed and construction starts.
It isn't far from the McCaffery's stables, which had been built over the legendary 'Paradise Quarry', where the best quality sandstone in Sydney had been extracted.

Starting my painting of the 'Excavation between Harris and Mount Streets, Pyrmont'  2017 oil on canvas 51 x 61cm

  $3,500

 Enquiries : janecooperbennett@gmail.com

Under the bitumen, an archaeologist's dig had revealed a cobbled sandstone path, a neatly finished sandstone cesspit, carved sandstone steps and mysterious carvings. One of the carved images resembled a child-like version of a church or chapel.  Paul Gye aka 'Pyrmonstrosity Pyrmontosis', who has dedicated many hours into painstakingly and expertly researching Pyrmont's hidden history, has concluded that these carvings might have dated from as early as 1840 and could refer to Dr JD Lang’s Presbyterian ‘Long Lost Chapel of Pyrmont’. The full album of photos of 'Pyrmonstrosity Pyrmontosis' site visit with photos of the carvings can be seen at Facebook album : Archaeological Site Visit - Mount & Harris Streets - 10 May 2017   
The chapel was later relocated to Ultimo, and its current location is the 'Mustard Seed' ministry in Bulwara Street (ironically opposite the Lord Wolseley Hotel).
Unfortunately despite their unique heritage value, the carvings have by now been completely destroyed by the excavation.

Starting my painting of the 'Excavation between Harris and Mount Streets, Pyrmont' 2017 oil on canvas 51 x 61cm

  $3,500

 Enquiries : janecooperbennett@gmail.com

During my site visit, I tried to persuade the archaeologists to let me paint on site before the demolition started, but they gave me the brush off, no pun intended.
Frustratingly I had to peer through the hoardings and shadecloth.

Starting my painting of the 'Excavation between Harris and Mount Streets, Pyrmont'  2017 oil on canvas 51 x 61cm

  $3,500

 Enquiries : janecooperbennett@gmail.com

The 2,300sq metre site on the south-western side of the Terminus Hotel, will be soon transformed into a collection of 15 low-rise terrace houses, known as the 'New Life Pyrmont' project. 

My painting of the 'Excavation between Harris and Mount Streets, Pyrmont' 2017 oil on canvas 51 x 61cm

  $3,500

 Enquiries : janecooperbennett@gmail.com

I persuaded a kind passer-by to hold up my painting so I could take a good photo of it against the demolition. 
The top half of the stairs once leading from Harris Street to the carpark have already been demolished, and the Harris Street frontage has been completely excavated and removed to allow trucks to enter and remove the sandstone. 
I've heard that the terraces have been designed to incorporate some of the excavated sandstone from the site.
More paintings of Pyrmont can be seen on my Pyrmont page in this blog.