Shadowboard

A shadow board is one of the most common options for tool storage found in amateur and professional workshops and sheds the world over. Its noble aim is to organize the workplace so that tools are near the work station where they are to be used.

Work in progress on the easel
E135A 'Shadowboard - No Brake' 2017
oil on metal panel 51 x 51cm
Available

Shadow boards have the outlines of a work station's tools marked on them, so operators can quickly identify which tools are in use or missing.

As well as providing easy access to tools,they are supposed to reduce time spent searching for the correct tool; to reduce losses due to carelessness, lack of proper maintenance or theft; to improve work station safety as tools are replaced safely after use, rather than becoming potential hazards; to reduce clutter; and to maximize the space available.

Work in progress on the easel
E135A 'Shadowboard - No Brake' 2017
oil on metal panel 51 x 51cm
Available

Well that was the Platonic ideal anyway.

The dream of imposing order on chaos is often cruelly exposed as exactly that - a dream, when reality kicks in.

How should a shadowboard be organized?

Sounds so easy and straightforward, but it reveals fundamental and often irreconcilable differences in temperament, age and level of expertise, and can be the source of perpetual bickering, even long-running feuds.

Work in progress on the easel
E135A 'Shadowboard - No Brake' 2017
oil on metal panel 51 x 51cm
Available

Should it be organized by type of tool (all spanners, screwdrivers etc grouped together), by size (aesthetically pleasing to have a hierarchy of tools descending by size, but not necessarily the most practical), by frequency of use (commonly used tools in the middle where they are easily removed or replaced) by ease of removal /replacement (large, awkwardly sized or heavy tools placed where people don't have to reach up or down for them) or by what is required for common tasks (a particular size of wrench/saw/hammer/screwdriver etc are often needed together for a task that crops up frequently).

Sometimes it can even be a passive-aggressive wish list, like a recent commercial for a hardware line of products where empty outlines were left for needed or desired tools, either in hope of a future financial windfall or thoughtful gift.

E135B'Shadowboard with 44 class diesel
-(Do not pull all way out) '
2017 oil on metal panel 51 x 51cm
Available

The usual result is a hotch potch of all the above.

Jumble of the useful, the once useful and now obsolete, the broken bits, the spare parts that 'may come in handy'; the lost, strayed and some frankly useless items that seem to breed unchecked in dark corners. When, if ever, were any of these used? Last week? Last century?

Work in progress on the easel
E135B'Shadowboard with 44 class diesel
-(Do not pull all way out) '
2017 oil on metal panel 51 x 51cm
Available

I used metal panels to paint on instead of my usual canvas, leaving the metal bare when the tool was shiny and well maintained, and only painting the non-metallic or rusty parts. The work above also includes a 44 class diesel lurking in the background.

The faded, naive lettering found on cryptic signs create abstract yet evocative grids of letters and word fragments, colour and text fading into meditative, elegiac compositions.

Other mysteries abound. As this is a workshop filled with tools and presumably people who know how to use them, why did someone bother to write "Do not pull all way out" on the drawers of the cabinet beneath, instead of fixing the drawer?

I'm no handyperson, but even I can fix drawers - it's fiddly but not that hard.

E135A 'Shadowboard - No Brake' 2017
oil on metal panel 51 x 51cm
Available

A massive Marie Kondo attack has been carried out in the Large Erecting Shop to tackle decades of clutter. Nothing to do with sparking joy.

Everything deemed not strictly necessary to the re-purposing of the Large Erecting Shop as a running shed is being given the old heave-ho - best case scenario sent to Thirlmere, worst case - the skip.

I was chased from one end of the shed to the other, as wherever I set up my easel, I seemed to get in the way. I was hunting for a quiet corner as the situation brought out crankiness in normally laid back people. I was incessantly asked "why I was painting this rubbish instead of the trains", but most of the trains will still exist somewhere, while this sort of subject, evoking the true spirit of the workshop, is ephemeral.

But fashions change as to what is deemed 'necessary' and unique and quirky items can be lost or destroyed in the rush to impose order on chaos..

In the Large Erecting Shop the shadowboards are no longer functional as no repair or maintenance will be carried out there.

Ghost boards with ghost signs for ghost trains.

They show the never to be filled outlines of lost tools for lost purposes.

Headstones of the workshop.

More paintings of the Eveleigh Railway Workshops

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The empty mask- Edwin Davey and Sons Flour Mill, Pyrmont

Built in 1896, the Edwin Davey and Sons Flour Mill was the last and one of the longest operating flour mills operating in inner Sydney.
The main building was a 4 storey brick flour mill in the utilitarian Federation Free Classical architectural style, with rectangular window openings and a corrugated iron roof behind a plain parapet.
The north facade had a large triangular pediment bearing the business name "Edwin Davey and Sons". On the western side, an extension built out to the cliff line. There was a rail siding from the old Metropolitan Goods Line on the northern side, below the escarpment with some remaining wheat elevation gear and corrugated iron clad extensions at the back of the mill.
By the time of these paintings from the early 2000s, the interior had long been gutted of any machinery and there are obvious horizontal bands of bracing girdling the exterior facade and keeping its last few bricks from falling onto the cars below.

P263A 'Edwin Davey Flour Mill'
2012 oil on board 26 x 38cm
Available
Until the 1860s the Ultimo end of the Pyrmont peninsula was still an undeveloped grazing property owned by Surgeon John Harris and his heirs.
In 1895, 10 lots of Block 42 of the Harris Estate was bought by Freeman and Sons, producers of a large range of household goods, who built a flour mill on the site.
In 1900 Edwin Davey, who already owned mills in South Australia, bought the Ultimo Roller Mills, to produce flour for export, as freight costs from Sydney were better than in Adelaide.

P100 Demolition of the Fielder Gillespie Flour Mills 2
1992 oil on paper 75 x 100cm
Available
The Ultimo Mill went into production in 1901 under the name Chanticleer Flour and operated until 1992, when it became part of Weston Milling Ltd. As the Ultimo mill was small and old fashioned, it was closed, gutted and sold for development.
By coincidence, about the same time, over the opposite side of Pyrmont Peninsula, Fielder Gillespie Flour Mills, next to the Pyrmont Power Station, was also being demolished. After a few weeks the Fielder Gillespie site was completely cleared and remained empty space until eventual redevelopment as a Woolworths and various other shops and offices. By contrast, the ghostly skeleton of the Edwin Davey and Sons building haunted the western edge of Pyrmont for a generation.


P263 'Edwin Davey Flour Mill'
2012 oil on paper 13 x 23cm
Available
By 2001 the building had been reduced to a wafer thin shell of bricks propped up in front of a weedy wasteland.
My painting above shows the interior of the facade, criss-crossed with bracing and scribbled over with cryptic graffiti.

The empty mask formerly known as the Edwin Davey and Sons flour mill was for almost 30 years a landmark for anyone driving to or from Pyrmont over the Anzac Bridge.It was demolished and replaced by an apartment block, with a small shed cantilevered on the western facade.

It lights up at night in a token gesture to the former building's existence.

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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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The wheels on the bus go round and round - Painting the London Bus at the Sydney Bus Museum

Today's painting on the deck gallery is another canvas painted at the Bus Museum in September 2017.

BUS 7 London bus' 2017
oil on canvas 51 x 25.5cm
Available

The London bus is having its wheels checked.

On the easel at Sydney Bus Museum
BUS 7 London bus' 2017
oil on canvas 51 x 25.5cm
Available

After World War II, London Transport bought over 6,000 double deckers, all built to a standardized design, mostly the AEC Regent III RT type, similar to the pre-war AEC buses.
The first prototype, known as the AEC Routemaster, was completed in September 1954 and the last one was delivered in 1968.
The first Routemasters entered service with London Transport in February 1956 and the last withdrawn from regular service in December 2005, although one heritage route still operates in central London. The Routemaster outlasted several of its replacements in London, and even survived the privatization of the London Transport bus operators .

BUS 7A  Study for London Bus,

Sydney Bus Museum

2019 oil on canvas 23 x 13cm
Available
BUS 7 London bus' 2017
oil on canvas 51 x 25.5cm
Available
In front of my patient model
at Sydney Bus Museum

The Routemaster had a pioneering design using lightweight aluminium and techniques developed in aircraft production during World War II. It also introduced innovative design features such as independent front suspension, power steering, a fully automatic gearbox and power-hydraulic braking, for the first time ever on a bus. Drivers found the Routemaster surprisingly light and nimble compared with earlier designs.

One of their main advantages was that the body could be lifted off the chassis during overhaul.The London fleet contained more bodies than chassis, as overhauling the body took longer than the chassis. A bus could go in for overhaul in the morning, and come out that afternoon with a different body.
In 2006, the Routemaster was voted one of Britain's top 10 design icons which included Concorde, Mini, London tube map, World Wide Web and the K2 telephone box.

BUS 7A  Study for London Bus,

Sydney Bus Museum

2019 oil on canvas 23 x 13cm

Available

This was my first much smaller study of the London bus

The Museum's bus, AEC RT - 3708, was registered NLE-815, and started life in May 1953 with a 'green' Weymann 8545 body, the most common type.

I don't know what it is about the colour, but I can't imagine a London bus in any other colour than red. Must make it go faster!

It had 3 overhauls during its London Transport career - in 1956, 1961, and it didn't get fitted with the iconic 'red' body until its final overhaul in 1965.

It ended its days at Southall garage, then was sold in March 1977, imported to Australia in 1984 and purchased by the Museum in 1989.

BUS 7 London bus' 2017

oil on canvas 51 x 25.5cm

Available

All information is courtesy of the experts of the Sydney Bus Museum

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The Milky bar kid - old milkbar 74 Harris Street

Today's painting on the easel of my deck gallery is a 2009 plein air oil painting of a derelict abandoned old shop in Pyrmont, fondly, but wrongly known as the "old bakery".

P257A 'Old milkbar aka 'bakery'
corner of John and Harris St'
2009 oil on canvas 51 x 61cm
Available

As far as I can remember the actual bakery was a few doors down and the corner shop was a milkbar, but we're talking at least 3 decades ago.

My standout memory of it when it was in its last days of operation was how rubbish I was at playing their "Fussball" machine, which was lines of wooden footballers attached to a stick that you tried to manoeuver by a lever to kick the ball.
Not a single goal!

The legendary Terminus Hotel on the opposite side of Harris Street, and like its more famous counterpart, was part of the Wakil's real life Monopoly game. They had a landbanking empire of quirky, derelict buildings which were loathed by local residents as eyesores but cherished by artists like myself.

Aren't Artists a perverse bunch - we ignore all the shiny new developments and make straight for the 'shame of the neighbourhood' to immortalize it!

P257A 'Old milkbar aka 'bakery'
corner of John and Harris St'
2009 oil on canvas 51 x 61cm
Available

The continuous row of 19th century 2 storey terrace houses between Nos 74 and 80 Harris Street are still part of the Wakil collection of formerly derelict buildings, which once included the iconic Terminus Hotel opposite.

The row of  terraces have rendered brick shopfronts and skillion roofed wings at the rear. They are plainly detailed, with only a string course to the facades as decoration, and a Victorian/Georgian flavour in their design. Door openings are rectangular, and window openings are also rectangular as well as slightly segmentally arched. They are without parapet or verandahs and feature corrugated iron gable roofs with low corniced or corbelled chimneys.

P256A 'Old Milkbar (aka 'Bakery'),
corner of Harris and John St'
2009 acrylic on paper 21 x 28cm
Available

No 74 is similar to the rest, but was a corner shop and is faceted with a corner entrance. It  was a milkbar for a long time, although often and wrongly referred to as the 'old bakery'.
Number 82 was the actual site of the "old bakery", although now the entire block seems to have adopted this name.

P257 'Old bakery corner of John and Harris St'
2012 oil on board  35 x 28cm
Available

For many years the corner and north facing doorways were boarded up and featured an endless layering of illegal posters promoting long forgotten bands.

 

P256B 'Old Milkbar and 'Chicks on Harris''
2009 acrylic on paper 21 x 28cm
Available

Until about 2014, No 82 still partly kept up the milk bar tradition,traded as a "charcoal chicken" outlet called "Chicks on Harris".

Bearing in mind the seedy reputations of previous establishments at the north end of Harris St, I'm not sure that the owners had really thought through the implications of their name!

Milk bars are now imbued with mythical qualities they never possessed in life. In decline and death, they’re trendy and retro.


P256 'Black Dog (old milkbar -
aka 'bakery' from John St)'
2009 oil on board 31 x 25cm
Available

No 74 has now been recently and very sympathetically redeveloped by the current occupants - appropriately, 'Belle Property' real estate agents. And now it really is a 'belle' property indeed.

It's been painted a tasteful off-white shade, and the former layers of peeling posters have been replaced by large picture windows.

I couldn't resist having a sneaky peek inside.

The interior still has the original wall material visible, and the beautiful old hardwood stairs have been polished, but otherwise in their original state. The architraves are dark walnut stained hardwood, but the rotting floors had collapsed long ago and had to be replaced with polished concrete.

The huge tree outside is a relic from when both sides of John Street were edged with a row of trees whose branches would meet in the middle of the street to form a cathedral-like canopy. Lush and cool in summer, but most beautiful in winter when the feeble rays of the sun would pierce through the tracery of bare branches.

A lovely tree, but its roots went straight for the plumbing, and the pavement outside is cracked and humped by the twisting roots underneath. I know that a few years ago, several people had considered this old shop on as a renovation project, but weren't quite crazy-brave enough to take it on.

For more information about Harris and John Street in Pyrmont, including the Terminus and Pyrmont Point Hotels

see My Pyrmont page in this blog

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Pyrmont Paintings past and present