Don't blow your stack- Painting the Port Kembla Copper Stack Part 1

I've been meaning to paint the Port Kembla copper stack ever since I heard about it being listed for demolition.
The 198m stack was built in 1965 on the Port Kembla Copper smelter site, off Electrolytic Road between Military Road and Darcy Road.

The Port Kembla Copper smelter finally closed down in 2003. Despite PKC’s efforts to keep the site open as a tourist attraction, an application was made to have it demolished in 2010.
This application then suffered a lengthy delay when asbestos was discovered at the site. There were a few false alarms - there was a rumour that it would be demolished in April 2013, then again in September. I realised that this time it would actually happen and I hurried down there 2 days before to try to paint the stack from as many vantage points as possible.
Better late than never!
I made sure that I packed a lot of long skinny canvases.

Starting an oil painting of the 2 chimneys

of Port Kembla Copper on

Tuesday evening 18th February 2014

Available

When I arrived on Tuesday afternoon, I started painting the stack from just outside the fence around the ruins of Port Kembla Copper on Darcy Road at the former Gate 18.
There was an earlier brick chimney, built probably in the early 1900s, which I believe might be retained. I wanted to capture the two together in my painting, although I wasn't able to include it in this photo.
I managed to complete a small canvas (31 x 15cm) of the copper stack from Darcy Road. I was rushing to paint as much as I could before the light faded, so I didn't stop to take a photo of this in situ, but you can see it in the photo below, in front of the blank canvas.
It is a poignant image of the stack behind the ruined tanks, furnaces and the old gatehouse of Port Kembla Copper against the luminous evening clouds.

Starting an oil painting of the
Port Kembla Copper stack from Military Road
on Wednesday morning 19th February 2014
Available

Early on Wednesday morning I set up my easel at the top of Military Road, next to Hill 60.

I put the small canvas of the stack from Darcy Road against my easel as inspiration.
As a 300m exclusion zone around the area was to be set up on Thursday, I had spent most of the previous day wandering around Port Kembla looking for good vantage points to paint and to view the demolition. The dramatic perspective of the hill and road leading up to the stack made this spot the winner.

Starting a painting of the Port Kembla Copper stack
from Military Road on Wednesday morning 19th February 2014
"Port Kembla Copper stack from Military Road,
the last day before demolition"
oil on canvas 61 x 31cm
Available
The sullen clouds overhead were joined by the smoke from the still operational Port Kembla Steelworks in the middle distance. Their chimneys were humbled by the overpowering height and bulk of the iconic Copper Stack.
Rumours about the impending closure of the steelworks made this scene even more poignant.
I wasn't the only one to find this great view. 

As you can see by the camera on the tripod in the photo above, I had barely started to paint when tag teams of roaming journalists descended to interview the local residents.

Starting a painting of the Port Kembla Copper stack
from Military Road on Wednesday morning 19th February 2014
"Port Kembla Copper stack from Military Road,
the last day before demolition"
oil on canvas 61 x 31cm
Available

I received a fair share of the media attention as well.
"Painting an iconic landscape before a looming monolith is felled" by Justin Huntsdale 19 February, 2014 3:00PM ABC Illawarra

Painting of the Port Kembla Copper stack
from Military Road on Wednesday morning 19th February 2014
"Port Kembla Copper stack from Military Road,
the last day before demolition"
oil on canvas 61 x 31cm
Available

However, by noon it had started to cloud over and I was worried that the distractions would mean that I wouldn't be able to complete my canvas before the rain became too heavy to continue.

Painting of the Port Kembla Copper stack
from Military Road on Wednesday morning 19th February 2014
"Port Kembla Copper stack from Military Road,
the last day before demolition"
oil on canvas 61 x 31cm
Available

By 2pm I had to leave as I was drenched, however, I had managed to capture the last day of the Port Kembla Copper Stack.

Related posts

Stacking the stackpot

Another one bites the dust

Eaten by Robots

"Painting an iconic landscape before a looming monolith is felled"

by Justin Huntsdale
19 February, 2014 3:00PM ABC Illawarra

Hammerhead Crane, Garden Island

Starting painting the Hammerhead Crane
on Garden Island
Enquiries
The Hammerhead Crane on Garden Island was built between 1944- 1951.

It was still, at the time of this painting, the largest dockside crane in Australia, and one of only 15 still standing around the world.

Soon there will be only 14, as Sydney's Hammerhead Crane has not been used since 1996 and will soon be demolished.

I've been trying to get access to paint the Hammerhead Crane from Garden Island for over 2 years.
After a longer than usual struggle with bureaucracy, I finally gained permission to paint there during the Navy "Rap" period.

No hiphop is involved with the Navy's "Rap"- it's apparently an acronym for reduced activity over the Christmas holiday period.

As the sky became more overcast, I decided to repaint the background for a more dramatic effect.

I think about these structures as a paleontologist regards fossils as once living organisms, and to understand them in that light.

The specimens paleontologists collect are not the living creatures but the few skeletons and fragments that have had the good fortune to survive the lottery of decay and fossilization and come out on the other side as beautiful relics.
The sites I paint are usually relics.

My vantage point for my first painting of the Hammerhead Crane on Garden Island is from the Fitting out Wharf, just to the north of the crane.
I have often painted the Hammerhead Crane from Mrs Macquarie's Chair and the Woolloomooloo Fingerwharf opposite. From these viewpoints, the Hammerhead Crane looked like an leftover Meccano toy.
However now I am almost directly beneath it, I feel overwhelmed by the power and scale of this immense crane looming over me.
The mass of scaffolding unfortunately obscures much of the original structure, while fortunately also preventing it from dropping rusty remnants on my head from a great height.
The contractors will have to construct a temporary crane next to the Hammerhead, which will take several weeks.
The demolition process might take the better part of a year from start to finish, so there will be time to paint many more canvases.

"Hammerhead Crane from the
Fitting Out Wharf, Garden Island "
2014 oil on canvas 61 x 51cm
Enquiries

Several of my paintings and drawings of the Hammerhead Crane have won multiple art awards.
I exhibited my series of paintings and drawings of the Hammerhead Crane at my solo exhibition at the Frances Keevil Gallery "Under the Hammer" 18th November - 7th December 2014.

More paintings with a naval theme
Painting the International Fleet Review at Barangaroo Part 2

Painting the International Fleet Review at Barangaroo

Painting 'Spirit of Tasmania' in Garden Island Drydock

Painting Thompson Square, Windsor

Thompson Square, the oldest public town square in Australia,  is a charming and unique relic of the colonial Georgian era Sydney. It is the only town square remaining from the original five ‘Macquarie towns’ planned and designed by Governor Lachlan Macquarie.

Starting a plein air oil painting of Thompson Square, Windsor
oil on canvas 25 x 152cm
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This Precinct is listed on the Register of the National Estate, the National Trust and also on the NSW State Heritage Register as being of State heritage significance.

Starting a plein air oil painting of Thompson Square, Windsor
oil on canvas 25 x 152cm
Enquiries

Most of the buildings in Thompson Square are regarded as of crucial historical and architectural merit. 

Half-way through my plein air oil painting of
Thompson Square, Windsor
oil on canvas 25 x 152cm
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The charm of Thompson Square is that it still retains the village square character originally intended by Macquarie.

Half-way through my plein air oil painting of
Thompson Square, Windsor
oil on canvas 25 x 152cm
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Windsor Bridge is the oldest existing bridge crossing the Hawkesbury River. The caisson deck supports are original and over 130 years old.
It was designed by the Public Works Department and constructed, between 1872-1874, by contractors Andrew Turnbull and William K. Dixon.

Half-way through my plein air oil painting of
Thompson Square, Windsor
oil on canvas 25 x 152cm
Enquiries

A plaque that was placed on the bridge to celebrate Australia's Bicentenary quoting the then Minister for Public Works John Sutherland, who opened the bridge in 1874, states:
"I hope this bridge will last longer than the life of the youngest child who passes over it today.'

Australia's heritage.

Half-way through my plein air oil painting of
Thompson Square, Windsor
oil on canvas 25 x 152cm
Enquiries

There are so many lovely viewpoints of the bridge, park, river and Georgian architecture that I found it difficult to choose!

Half-way through my plein air oil painting of
Thompson Square, Windsor
oil on canvas 25 x 152cm
Enquiries

I decided to paint a panoramic canvas from the "Doctor's House" on the far left to the "School of Arts" building over the road on the right, with the lovely park in the centre.

Half-way through my plein air oil painting of
Thompson Square, Windsor
oil on canvas 25 x 152cm
Enquiries

The historic Windsor bridge, just to the right of the "Doctor's House" is linking the middle distance to the background, and the Hawkesbury river can just be glimpsed between the trees.

The artist painting Thompson Square, Windsor
oil on canvas 25 x 152cm
Enquiries

Painting 'en plein air' in the oldest town square in Australia. I'm following the footsteps of Arthur Streeton, who painted "the Purple Noon's Transparent might" in the Hawkesbury district.

Related posts

The Boiling Frog

 Paintings of Pink Pubs -Painting the Jolly Frog Part 2

Fish and chips

The Phantom Toll House

See my page of Windsor paintings

Pyrmont sandstone - The Lizards of Oz

I used to think that in Sydney, sandstone was as common as dirt.
Sydney is to me, not the emerald city or the Harbour city, but a golden city - the sandstone city. Sandstone seems to be everywhere -from sand and rocks on the beaches to the glorious escarpments revealed by cuttings for expressways. But most of this apparent abundance is commercially useless and the rest is fit only for fill or crazy paving at best.
The only sandstone of sufficient quality and durability to be used to restore or replace the exquisite carvings of Sydney's iconic 19th century architectural heritage such as the Queen Victoria building, the buildings on Macquarie St, or the University of Sydney is Pyrmont yellowblock.
Sandstone is a sedimentary rock consisting mostly of quartz or a mix of quartz and feldspar sands, in conjunction with materials such as calcite, clay, iron oxides, and silica which cement it together. It takes on the color of its components, most commonly tan to yellowish or tinted pink to dark red due to varying levels of iron oxide.
There are a lot of variations of texture and color, not many of which are suitable for commercial use. Common forms of sandstone include arkose which has a high feldspar content, graywacke which contains angular rock fragments, and conglomerate which contains rounded rock fragments. Other common stones included in this category are bluestone- a hard, dense feldspathic sandstone; brownstone- a reddish-brown stone taking its color from its high iron content;and flagstone- a sandstone or sandy slate that is easily split into large, thin slabs.
The spine of the Pyrmont peninsula is a sandstone ridge, still visible at Pyrmont Point despite reshaping by deforestation, quarrying, land reclamation and subsequent industrialization and de-industrialization. Pyrmont's topography was dramatically altered as the quarrymasters cut vast swathes through its famous yellowblock, stripping it bare to make the rest of Sydney beautiful.


" Ways Terrace, Pyrmont"
1994 oil on board 41 x 122cm
Enquiries
Often the demolition madness that engulfed the peninsula throughout the 1990s would have the unexpected bonus of revealing the hidden beauty beneath the surface.
In 1989 the gardens planted by local residents in the James Watkinson Reserve in front of Ways Terrace were demolished and left derelict. The 2 dead trees on the hill were a notorious landmark for over a decade. The hole became a pond with many waterfowl, so possibly it was the site of the original Pyrmont spring.
When LendLease started the demolition of the CSR Distillery for the Jackson's Landing development, McCaffery's stables were excavated and revived as a premium source of sandstone.
It was cut like giant blocks of cheese and stored under the newly built Anzac Bridge before being sculpted to restore heritage projects on historic buildings all over Sydney.

"Pyrmont - McCaffery's Hill -Demolition of CSR Distillery "
2000 oil on canvas 61 x 46 cm
Enquiries 

This painting shows the site of the old "Paradise Quarry" , renowned as the source of the best Pyrmont yellowblock sandstone during the 19th century.
The "paradise stone" was a warm honey-yellow to brown colour but was dense fine-grained and comparatively difficult to work compared to the stone from the other 2 quarries, "Purgatory" and "Hellhole".
After the quarries closed in the late 19th century, the McCaffrey's stables were built there by the CSR to stable the horses that transported the sugar and rum from the refinery and distillery. Later the stables were used to house the brilliant green sugar trucks which had replaced the horses and carts.


" Sandstone under the Anzac Bridge" 1998
oil on canvas 41 x 61cm
Enquiries 
After these blocks of sandstone had been quarried at McCaffrey's Stables, they were then sent to cool their heels for a while under the Anzac Bridge, where the dragon boats are now stored.
Later these blocks were sent to the stone masons trained by the master mason George Proudman under the Centenary Stoneworks Programme. Eventually this sandstone was used to restore heritage items such as the gargoyles of the University of Sydney.
Pyrmont’s sandstone has decorated the best loved historic Sydney buildings such as the Australian Museum, the Sydney Post Office, the Lands Department and the University of Sydney. These intricate swirls of foliage writhe around the top of the columns of the western entrance of Sydney Technical College in Ultimo.


P258 'Capital of Sydney Technical College'
2012 oil on canvas 20 x 20cm

Enquiries

The Sydney Technical College building, which is part of the main campus of Sydney Institute of TAFE (Technical and Further Education), is on Mary Ann Street at the southern end of Bulwara Road in Ultimo, although the street address is given as 651-731 Harris Street. Built in 1891, it was designed by William Kemp in the Federation Romanesque architectural style. I call it Glebe Gothic.


P259 'Capital of Sydney Technical College' 2012
oil on canvas 20 x 20cm
Enquiries 

The heavily ornate brick and terracocotta construction is adorned with bizarrely incongruous Australian ornamental plants and animals such as waratahs, kangaroos, wombats, echidnas, platypuses and lizards.
They were created by the master sculptor of the Lands Department building, William Priestly Macintosh.
There is a similar outburst of patriotism with the sculptors of the gargoyles and grotesques of the University of Sydney. Some Australian fauna can be adapted into truly frightening gargoyles and it's a pity that their forms were unknown to the master craftsmen of Cluny. One of the bug-eyed twitchy kangaroos with bared claws poised to hurtle off the roof of the Quadrangle is known fondly by the students as "Skippy on a 3 day meth binge".

'The Lizards of oz-

Sydney Technical College, Ultimo Tafe' 2012

oil on board 20 x 40cm
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Lizards do enjoy soaking up the warmth, and the golden sandstone attracts the few feeble rays of sun that have been available this wet summer.
These goannas have picked a precarious but attractive perch to catch up on their tans while stalking the hapless marsupials and monotremes that cling to the arches below. The platypus seems unaware but the possum looks very alarmed and turns to hiss in anger.
The sculptor has done a wonderful job of reproducing the scaliness of their skins, and even the slight greying discolouration of the sandstone on their backs helps add to the illusion of reptilian flesh.

Related posts

Terminus Redux

To the Point
Wrong side of the tracks - Darling Island Bond and Free
Pretty vacant 
My Pyrmont page in this blog

A Tale of two hotels - the Terminus and the Point

The bad twin of Pyrmont Street

Pyrmont Paintings past and present 

Brewer's Droop - Painting the Carleton United Brewery, Chippendale

The southern edge of the Sydney CBD, adjacent to Central railway station incorporating Broadway and Chippendale, was dominated by a walled off 'Empire of Beer' for over 170 years.

Kent Brewery was built by John Tooth and Charles Newnham in 1835. It exploited the fresh water from nearby Blackwattle Creek. However, Blackwattle Creek didn't stay fresh for long, and soon the surrounding area was a notorious slum.

The unregulated and noxious local industries included the Swamp Abattoirs across Parramatta Road in Ultimo, which provided the Char House of the Colonial Sugar Refinery with bones to burn to produce charcoal for filtering sugar.

CH4 Pub with no beer- Carleton United Brewery 2
2009 oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
Available

When bubonic plague hit waterside Sydney in the first decade of the 20th century, the authorities embarked on a program of slum clearances and 350 Chippendale houses were resumed by 1911.

Tooth's brewery site moved into the vacuum, extending their empire of beer more than 6 acres into the surrounding residential areas. Tooth's owned the western side of Kensington Street, and demolished properties  to construct new brewery buildings, as well as a wall to exclude the public. Yet another wall was built on the northern side of Wellington Street.

You can see this wall running behind the Irving Street Brewery boiler house in the painting above, which was painted during the demolition craziness not long after the property had been bought by Frasers Property for redevelopment.

Tooth’s Irving Street Brewery was built in 1912, and covered most of the land between Carlton and Balfour Streets.

CH3 Pub with no beer- Carleton United Brewery
2009 oil on canvas 100 x 75cm
Available

This iconic Sydney landmark is an 180 ft high octagonal brick tapering structure with metal strapping with cracked coping. Brick buttresses transfer the structure to a square base. 

The Irving Street Brewing Tower ceased its brewing operation in 1979, as it was superseded by the New Brewhouse.

It was one of the earliest and most prominent chimney stacks built in the CBD, and one of the last remaining in inner Sydney.

In the 1980s, a large redevelopment saw the demolition of all but one of the original Kent Brewery buildings. and Carlton and Uniting Breweries purchased it.

Until 1983 there were 1000 personnel at the brewery including lab staff, engineers, plumbers, fitters and turners, coppersmiths, blacksmiths, coopers, trades assistants, storemen, drivers and security.

In 1983 Tooth and Co were taken over by the Adelaide Steamship Company and the brewing assets were sold to Carlton and United Breweries and in 2003 the brewery closed forever.

Frasers Property bought the 5.8 hectare site in 2007 and embarked on a wildly ambitious $2 billion urban renewal project. It incorporates mixed use development including high density apartments,student accommodation in Kensington and Abercrombie Streets, a shopping centre, office blocks, and the old Brewery will be turned into a boutique hotel.

In my paintings you can see how the Irving Street Brewery building resembled a ruined castle on an island in the middle of a moat. It was a dreadfully boggy site after all the other buildings were clear felled around it and therre was a perpetual pool of water surrounding the old brewery.

Some heritage features have been selectively kept in the mix. Run down terraces in Kensington Street have become "Spice Alley", a funky "Eat Street", the sandstone gateway has been kept and the Irving Street Brewery building has now been adaptively reused as a community facility while also housing the site’s sustainable features including the tri generation plant providing the power, heating and cooling.

Chippendale, once an embarrassing slum, is now the fashionable hipster enclave known as Central Park.

Related posts

Barangaroo-Red Square, the Drill Rig and a little Archaeology

My page of Urban Landscape paintings

Both sides of the Street- My exhibition at St Vincents

Constant Reader

"Closing the Gap" Painted from the top of the ANZAC Bridge' 
1995 oil on canvas 91x122cm  
SOLD 
COLLECTION: THE MITCHELL LIBRARY, STATE LIBRARY OF NSW

It's strange how when some paintings have been completed, they take on a life of their own.
One of my favourite art documentaries has always been the series "The Private Life of a Masterpiece" showing the weird and wonderful uses and occasionally abuses of various famous paintings. Paintings that were forgotten for centuries, suddenly rediscovered and revered, mocked for being cliches and sent up rotten by Monty Python, and then revered again.
My painting "Closing the Gap" has already had a very exciting afterlife indeed. It was completely ignored for nearly a decade,and spent some time cooling its heels behind a nameless gallery's photocopier, but I knew even when I was painting it that if I could hang out long enough, its time would come. I chose it as one of the images on my business cards, and noted that it was the most popular of all my cards. In fact a few people admitted that they had actually framed some of them as though they were miniatures! The actual canvas was exhibited for 2 years in the Powerhouse Museum, Ultimo, , in the exhibition : "Paradise,Purgatory and Hellhole-a history of Ultimo and Pyrmont". It made a brief visit to an exhibition in the funky Insa-dong gallery precinct of Seoul in South Korea a couple of years ago, and it was reproduced in an Asian art journal.
In 2009 it was acquired for the collection of the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW.
In 2010 it featured in the exhibition - "ONE hundred"100 iconic objects from the permanent collection of the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, to celebrate the centenary of their founding in 1910, and a large image of it graced the back cover of the State Library Magazine.
In 2011, reproductions of it papered the boards covering the renovation work on the State Reference Library.
Now the State Library is going to hang a large reproduction of my work in the reading room of the redesigned State Reference Library. The display should be set up by the end of September, although the official launch of the renovations of the State Library won't be until Stage 2 has been completed, which would probably be in March 2012.
 "Closing the Gap" now seems to have become the iconic image of the western side of Sydney Harbour, just as Brett Whiteley's "Jacaranda Tree on Sydney Harbour"  is the iconic image for the eastern side. Lavender Bay symbolized the hedonistic lifestyle dream of Sydney in the 1960s and 70s as Pyrmont now embodies the ideal of the early 21st century. There may be free bookmarks, postcards and possibly even more merchandise to go with it. If I had a brain, I would have asked for royalties, but unfortunately I'm an artist and not an accountant, so I'll settle for fame and glory instead! The Library has said that they might even put my blog address on the main image at the copy desk. Apparently they can do a "QR code" so people can link to the blog with their mobile phones ... Considering that a bit over a year ago I didn't even know what a blog was, I'm impressed. I feel as though I have become as much a mascot for the State Library as "Trim" the cat!

Related articles

• Pyrmont : Shadows of the past (janebennettartist.blogspot.com)
• A Tale of two Pyrmont Hotels - 'The Terminus and the Point' (janebennettartist.blogspot.com)
• Eye retains rights to Glebe Island Silos megasite (mumbrella.com.au)

Gantry

Demolition of Cruise ship Terminal at Darling Harbour 8

The Gantry

I had wondered if the gantries were to be kept intact and possibly recycled for use at the new cruise ship terminal soon to be built at White Bay.

Ironically they are instead about to be demolished by the very same man who built the orange gantry only 8 years ago.
More irony :
At the foot of the gantry is an incongrous inscription in fading and cracked fluorescent cadmium yellow capital letters :

"KEEP"

Breakfast in the ruins with my half finished canvas
of the last gantry of Wharf 8,
the former cruise ship terminal of Barangaroo

My painting of the last gantry of Wharf 8

View more of my Barangaroo paintings at my Barangaroo blog 'Painting Barangaroo'

Related posts

May close without warning

Eaten by Robots

Tie a yellow Ribbon

The Last of the Hungry Mile

Barangaroo - Tabula Rasa   

Another one bites the dust

The White Shed at White Bay

Terminal, End or Extremity

Paintings of the Arrivals Hall of the former cruise ship terminal Wharf 8 at Barangaroo.

These are unfinished oil paintings on canvas of the interior of the deserted former cruise ship terminal at Darling Harbour Wharf 8.
My first day of painting this canvas:

'I saw the number '8' in red... '
oil painting on canvas 61 x 91cm
Sold 
Private Collection : Sydney
Enquiries about similar paintings 

The title is my homage to the 1928 Charles Demuth painting "I saw the number 5 in gold..", an icon of American Modernism. Like Demuth, I never let go of reality.
Though not a physical likeness, Demuth used imagery from William Carlos Williams’ poem "The Great Figure," to create an abstract portrait of his friend. The intersecting lines, repeated "5," round forms of the numbers, lights, street lamp, and blaring sirens of the red fire engine speeding down the street infuse the painting with a vibrant, urban energy.

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city

"The Great Figure" William Carlos Williams

'I saw the number '8' in red... '
oil painting on canvas 61 x 91cm
Sold 
Private Collection : Sydney
Enquiries about similar paintings 

The 2nd day of this painting- nearly finished, but needs glazing to emphasize the reflections and the dramatic shafts of light from the doorways.

The completed painting: "I saw the number '8' in red... "2010  

oil painting on canvas  61 x 91cm 
Sold 
Private Collection : Sydney
Enquiries about similar paintings 

Starting my 2nd painting of the interior of the Arrivals Hall:
Setting out a rough idea of the composition:

"I saw the number '8' in red" 2010
oil painting on canvas  61 x 183cm
Sold 
Private Collection : Sydney
Enquiries about similar paintings 

Starting work on a large panoramic interior of the Arrivals Hall.

This is a Saturday, and apart from the bored security guards on the gate I have the whole place more or less to myself so it is eerily silent.

For a change I have managed to get here early.

I've been battling a killer bout of flu for over a month and I've had to push myself to keep working. My throat has been so sore that I can only eat jelly and chicken soup for the last week.

I've taken in a thermos of icecubes to numb my throat and they seem to help. Whinge, whinge. This is totally self inflicted- I've been painting outdoors in the middle of winter on a freezing cold wharf in a howling gale and to misquote Alice in Wonderland it is bound to disagree with you sooner or later. However I wouldn't swap what I do for anything; it keeps me endlessly fascinated.

I only wish that I wouldn't get ill just at this crucial point in the history of Sydney Harbour - this is the last wharf on the historic Hungry Mile, which has been the fountainhead of Australia's maritime industry since settlement over 200 years ago, and it will be demolished in less than a fortnight!

No other artist in Australia seems to have an MSIC or a greencard; so I am the only person permitted to paint any of this.

Half way through my 1st day of painting :

"I saw the number '8' in red" 2010
 oil painting on canvas  61 x 183cm
Sold 
Private Collection : Sydney

Enquiries about similar paintings

Work in progress on the easel at the end of the first day.

I saw the number '8' in red" 2010
oil painting on canvas 61 x 183cm
Sold
Private Collection : Sydney
Enquiries about similar paintings

I have used 'terminal' as part of the title of paintings in this series as a play on words. The following nuances of meaning I found particularly apt :

1.situated at or forming the end or extremity of something...
2. occuring at or forming the end of a series, succession, or the like; closing; concluding
7.pertaining to or placed at a boundary, as a landmark.
8. occuring at or causing the end of life: a terminal disease.
9.(Informal) utterly beyond hope, rescue or saving...
10. a terminal part of a structure; end or extremity.
13. a station on the line of a public carrier,as in a city centre ... where passengers embark or disembark...

(Courtesy of Dictionary.com)

Take your pick!

Related Posts

The last of the Hungry Mile

Barangaroo - Tabula Rasa

Eaten by Robots

There goes the neighbourhood

See more at my Hungry Mile page

See more at my Millers Point page