Painting Mungo Scott Flour Mills, Summer Hill Part 2

Today's painting on the easel of my deck gallery is from 2009 and is of the last flour truck to depart the Mungo Scott Flour Mills in Summer Hill.

SU9 Summer Hill, Mungo Scott Flour Mills Last Flour truck .
2009 oil on canvas 28 x 36cm
Available for sale
This vast behemoth was the last operational flour mill in Sydney.
Mungo Scott Ltd acquired the land for £3000 in 1916 and built the flour mill with an estimated £10,000 budget in 1921-22.

SU3 Summer Hill Mungo Scott Flour Mills Late Afternoon
2009 oil on canvas 30 x 30cm
Available for sale
It exploited the newly built Metropolitan goods line between Wardell Road and Darling Harbour.
The Summer Hill freight line, alongside Hawthorne Canal, was used twice a week to service the Mills. This branch line was the last operational section of the once mighty Metropolitan goods line before it was redeveloped as light rail/cycling track.

SU2 Summer Hill Mungo Scott Flour Mills Evening
2009 oil on canvas 30 x 30cm
Available for sale
A huge fire in the mill in 1927 was believed to have been caused by sparks caused by passing trains igniting stored flour.
The landmark silos appeared in the early 1950s, as Goodman Fielder grew the Mill’s capacity. Allied Mills took control of the buildings in the 1950s and they were used as a key processing facility for wheat grown in New South Wales until 2009.
The last train ran to the Mungo Scott flour mill on 1 December 2008.

SU1 Summer Hill Mungo Scott Flour Mills by Night
2009 oil on canvas 30 x 30cm
Available for sale
As the Mungo Scott Flour Mills were conveniently close to the Taylor galleries in Smith street where I held regular exhibitions, I was well placed to be able to paint canvases of some of its last operations, including some of the last flour trucks to leave the Mills. 

Allied Mills finally vacated the site forever in about 2010 and moved their operations to a huge site in Picton, in Sydney's south-west, which I drive past whenever I exhibit my paintings at the Thirlmere Festival of Steam.

SU6 Summer Hill Mungo Scott Flour Mills Last Flour truck
2009 oil on canvas 41 x 61cm
PRIVATE COLLECTION : SYDNEY
Enquiries about other Summer Hill paintings

The precinct is now redeveloped and is home to offices and more than 400 apartments.

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Painting from the silos of the Mungo Scott Flour Mills

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Painting from the silos of Mungo Scott Flour Mills, Summer Hill

Today's painting on the easel of my 'deck gallery' is a view of and from the silos of Summer Hill’s famous Mungo Scott flour mill. This vast behemoth was an icon of Sydney’s inner west skyline for nearly 100 years.
It also evokes memories of a gallery where I used to exhibit between 2003 - 10.
From the early 1990s I used to exhibit in the Delmar Gallery in Summer Hill. When the Director, Max Taylor, left to establish his own gallery, the Taylor Galleries, I exhibited there from 2003 until its closure in 2010. The Mungo Scott flour mill was just a few doors down from the Taylor Galleries in Smith Street, Summer Hill. I was utterly fascinated with it and often painted views of it from the surrounding streets before or after delivering or collecting paintings.

SU12 Mungo Scott Flour Mills Night from the top of the silo
2007 oil on canvas 30 x 30cm 

 Available for sale
One day in 2004 I finally plucked up the courage to ask to be allowed to paint there. They couldn't have been kinder!
I was given the 'grand tour' of the Escher like maze of criss-crossing, zig-zagging walkways from the main building to the top of the silos. When I returned to paint there, everyone helped carry my easel and wet canvases.
Just as well, as while I was certainly strong enough, I would have been hopelessly lost getting from one building to another. It was so confusing navigating the various levels, and it was complicated by the fact that it was still an operational flour mill.
My guide wore a 'Gumby' style hairnet, goggles and gloves. He joked that people knew whether or not they were gluten intolerant within the hour.
Apparently I am - I was sneezing, wheezing & itching, and had to wear a mask whenever I painted there as I had trouble breathing. I've never really liked bread, and now I know why!

SU8 Summer Hill Mungo Scott Flour Mills Panorama
2004 ink acrylic pastel on paper 118 x 118cm 

 Available for sale
The silos were truly scary, especially at night. They were very high up, sloped & some didn't even have guardrails. When I was drawing and painting my huge panoramas of the unforgettable view of the inner west from the top of the silos, I was frankly terrified as I had unfortunately picked the highest silo, and for extra points it didn't have a guardrail.

SU7 Summer Hill Mungo Scott Flour Mills Panorama
2004 oil painting on canvas 91 x 122cm 

Enquiries about other Summer Hill paintings 
The spectacular view made up for the danger. The Summer Hill freight line carving its way through the inner west was directly beneath me.
Soon it would be literally re-cycled. Some of it would be reserved for light rail, and some would be a cycling track.
I was lucky to get to the Mungo Scott Flour Mills in time. Summer Hill was fast being engulfed by the tide of gentrification transforming former gritty industrial zones into hip neighbourhoods, driving up rents and pushing artists even further away from the inner city.

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Painting Sydney Harbour in the footsteps of Turner

All this winter I've felt something's been lacking.

Vivid.

Due to Covid-19 it couldn't be held this year, and for all I know New Year's Eve and Australia Day celebrations may not be held in the foreseeable future either.

I've often mocked Sydney for valuing style over substance, but I have to confess that I like a mindlessly pretty display of fairy lights against a harbour view as much as anyone.

So for anyone getting withdrawal symptoms, here's one on the easel of my deck gallery.

U118 Fireship under the Bridge
oil on canvas 2003 61 x 91cm
Available for sale
This canvas of the burning ship against a backdrop of fireworks illuminating the Sydney Harbour Bridge was painted in the studio from a series of quick gouache studies that I did on New Year's Eve 2003, well over a decade before Vivid was ever thought of. I regard this as a sort of 'proto-Vivid'.
It added a new dimension to the usual fireworks and was a startling sight if you weren't aware that it was in fact a special effect, and not a tragic fire on board the 'James Craig'.
The first time I saw it, like hundreds, possibly thousands of others, I rang 000 in a panic to report it. You could almost hear the person from Emergency Services rolling their eyes, as they assured me that it was just a special effect, that , no, the James Craig was just fine, and thanked me for my misplaced concern.
The Fireship apparently commemorated an early 19th century convict ship that had caught fire, and in the weeks after, during the Sydney Festival, there was a 'son et lumiere' show every night for a couple of weeks. I forget the details and the story, and frankly I think everyone else did as well. The images of the fire reflected in the water were all the spectators really were interested in, and the story seemed just a flimsy excuse.
As I painted some quick sketches in gouache and watercolour, I was glad that i'd spent so much of my 1996 Marten Bequest Traveling Art Scholarship holed up in the Print and Drawing Room of the Clore Gallery (the section of the Tate Gallery devoted to the work of Turner, obsessively painting studies of the many fabulous Turner watercolours in their collection. The Petworth series and the burning of the Houses of Parliament were my favourites. I became so good at painting them that the staff became slightly alarmed, and demanded that I sign my studies on the back so that I wouldn't be able to do a bit of a 'switcheroo' while their backs were turned! I took this as a sort of a backhanded compliment, but my goal wasn't to just mindlessly copy, but to try to conquer the mystery of painting sea,sky, storm, night and fire. How to make the intangible, tangible.
When I returned from my Traveling Art Scholarship, I actually exhibited some of these in a couple of exhibitions "The Grand Tour" and "In the Footsteps of the Masters" that acted like a sort of debriefing - a transition phase from the scholarship to the routine of regular commercial exhibitions.
I'd seen a lot of amazing art, and learnt a lot, but how was I going to incorporate this into what I would paint on my return?

U118 Fireship under the Bridge
oil on canvas 2003 61 x 91cm
Available for sale
Painting the Fireship was a chance to give a virtuoso display of layers of translucent glazes of breathtakingly expensive and exotic colours such as Aureolin, Rose Madder and Alizarin Crimson. These aren't the sort of colours that usually get a work out during plein air painting.
However, as I started to paint lost trades and dying industries, I would get more and more frequent opportunities to use them. Subjects like the Oxycutter at William Wallbank and Sons, or the Blacksmiths at the Eveleigh Railway Workshops provided further connections to the lost world of the Early Industrial Revolution that Turner and his predecessors de Loutherbourg and Joseph Wright of Derby immortalized. The major difference is that these artists were painting the founding of this era - I'm painting its demise.

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Meltdown, Oxycutting at William Wallbank and Sons

Irons in the fire