Millers Point from the top of the Harbour Control Tower

Before the inevitable demolition of the Harbour Control Tower, I wanted to paint a very large panorama of this amazing view.

I'd had the run of the top floor and the amenities level of the 87 metre high Harbour Control Tower from the early 2000s until port operations finished there in April 2011. Afterwards I had occasional access to create paintings of various stages of the construction of Barangaroo. 

I'd spent many unforgettable New Year’s Eves on the top floor, painting 360 degrees of the fireworks exploding underneath against the spectacular harbour view.

The perspective was very tricky, so I warmed up with a few smaller works first.

This is a small study of the rooftops of the heritage Miller's Point terraces and the former Bond stores of the Walsh Bay Wharves.

Work in progress " Miller's Point  and Walsh Bay Wharves

from top of the Harbour Control Tower "

2014 oil painting on canvas 36 x 46cm

.

There was such an overwhelming mass of tiny details that I needed to tackle this subject in a series of small works before risking getting bogged down in a huge oil painting. I wanted to understand the rhythm of the landscape.

The perspective is made more complex by the landbridges over the twisting streets winding their way from the angled rows of Walsh Bay Wharves up the hills.

The entire suburb of Miller's Point lies at my feet and the roads seem to curve towards the Opera House in the middle distance.

HCT47  'Millers Point from top of Harbour Tower'
oil on canvas 36 x 46cm

As you can see, my palette changed by the time I finished this work - one of the hazards of working 'en plein air'. I started early, but didn't finish for a few hours, so the clear pale yellows of the morning deepened to the burnt orange and rich purple shadows of the afternoon.
I had to stand on a chair to paint this, as the windows on the Amenities floor were a bit too high for me to see the terraces.
I'm only 5'1"- short, even for a woman.
Exactly the same height as Toulouse-Lautrec. Unfortunately I love painting canvases on an epic scale.

The tower would sway in the wind, sometimes almost imperceptibly, and sometimes with a rolling motion that can induce seasickness which is distracting when trying to paint fine details.

In the far distance, you can see the silhouette of the half-demolished Hammerhead Crane on Garden Island, which was finally removed by October 2014. I had just finished a stint as 'Artist in Residence' on Garden Island painting this before the demolition started.

The demolition of the Harbour Control Tower would be next. However I did manage to finish a few large scale panoramas from the top floor, before I lost one of my best studios forever.

The State library now has several of these works in their collection.

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Black cat of Union Square

Are black cats lucky?

People seem to be equally divided into those who think its lucky to have a black cat cross their path, and those who think it's very unlucky.

I feel this cat was a lucky omen for this particular nook of Pyrmont.

Union Square, in contrast to many other parts of Pyrmont, had kept much of its original character. Unlike many other inner city neighbourhoods, this one has so far dodged the relentless rollout of Westconnex and other highways and tollways that has blitzed several other nearby suburbs on the fringe of the city.

In 2009, the NSW Government's proposal for a Metro entrance in the charming historical precinct of Union Square had threatened to obliterate one of the last remaining vestiges of Pyrmont's heritage. But times and governments change, and the whole project was cancelled in 2010. The vaguely Parisian atmosphere of Union Square remains a charming contrast to the bloated pomposity of the Star Casino only a block away. 

P277 Union Square Terraces + Paternoster Row

2011 oil on canvas  31 x 103cm

Available

One of the many joys of plein air painting is that the time that I have to spend looking at my subject reveals tiny details lost to a more casual observer.

On the corner of Union st and Paternoster Row there is a faded and clumsily drawn painting of an almost headless black cat, which goes mostly unnoticed by the passing cyclists. It fascinates me that this cryptic little fragment has somehow escaped being scraped off or obliterated with a schmick new paint job.

It was painted by an eccentric street artist Bruno Dutot some time between about 1989 and 1991 before the arrival of a more strident fashion in graffiti from New York a few years later.

P277 Detail of cat painted on wall-
Union Square Terraces + Paternoster Row
2011  oil on canvas  31 x 103cm
Available

This fragment of a cat once had a very soigne companion, painted in a style reminiscent of Erte, but in an endearingly amateur fashion. She was a slender, highly stylized and stylish woman called rather weirdly, "Oucha", and versions of this image cropped up all over the inner city in her heyday of the late 1980s - 1990s.

I remember passing her strangely elongated image on the corner of Union Square and Paternoster Row, back in the days when Union Square had two-way traffic and was a shortcut to the Fishmarkets and Glebe.

P274 Union Square Terraces 4 -
a little piece of Paris in Pyrmont
 2010 oil on canvas  31 x 61cm
Available

The painting above shows Union Square from Paternoster Row down to Pyrmont Street. It was painted in 2010, just before the cancellation of the Metro plans had been made public.

Back then, the chimneys of the Pyrmont Power Station loomed over the terraces of Union Square instead of the equally monolithic Casino. The 'Harlequin Inn' which can be seen to the right of this canvas, on the corner of Union Square and Harris Street, was then the more down at heel 'Duke of Wellington' and boasted a huge and incongruous cartwheel as a wall feature. The two way road has been transformed into a one way lane with a large pedestrian area circling the "Angel of Union Square", with seating and odd sandstone 'mushrooms' (actually part of the balustrade salvaged long ago from the now pedestrianized Pyrmont Bridge) But, essentially, very little has changed in Union Square since the 1980s.

P242 Pyrmont Post Office
1993 oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
Available

The painting above was painted in the early 1990s from the other end of Union Square, and shows the intersection of Union Square and Miller Street as a two-way street before it became a plaza. The "Angel of Union Square" is in the centre and behind her is the Commonwealth Bank painted a particularly horrid shade of "Paddington Pink". On the extreme right is a corner of the "Duke of Wellington" Hotel, and on the right is the golden sandstone archway of the Walter Liberty Vernon designed Pyrmont Post Office.

The last example of "Oucha" that I know of, can still be seen on a corner of Edgecliff road on the left hand side travelling from the city towards Edgecliff. She is occasionally repainted, possibly even by the original artist, and sometimes decorated with glitter.

She and her cat are relics of a less worldly age.

The wall above the cat has an obvious tidemark where "Oucha" has been painted over with more enthusiasm than skill and it remains distinctly two-toned.

P276 Angel of Union Square
2010 oil on wood 23 x 12cm
Available

The lovely First World War monument known locally as the "Angel of Union Square" seems to have had a protective effect over her square, acting as a shield against marauding developers.

But I like to think of the little faded and forgotten black cat as her mascot.

See more paintings of Union Square at the Pyrmont page in my blog

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On location - A Short film of my paintings

This is the link to view a short film of me painting on location in Millers Point and talking about the paintings in my solo exhibition "Under the Hammer"

Short film of "Under the Hammer" 

 While I was painting some tiny quick studies of terrace houses in Argyle Place in October-November 2014, I was filmed by Lachlan Bennett (no relation!). In the film, I speak about industrial heritage, the de-industrialisation of the city and my latest solo exhibition, 'Under
the Hammer'.

It's impossible to convey the same sense of wonder and beauty that I experience while painting on location, but it's worth a try.

"36 Argyle Place"  2014
 oil on canvas 15 x 10cm
Available
Enquiries : janecooperbennett@gmail.com

As well as capturing me at work, Lachlan also visited the Frances Keevil Gallery to film an interview with me, and to view the paintings of Millers Point in the context of my previous work. Just before my solo exhibition opened, Lachlan visited High Street, Millers Point to film me painting the finishing touches on the large panorama of the Harbour Tower from High St.

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