How To Make A Painting Of A Big Snake.

This is the first of my museum paintings- Museum I (Python) - and below it is the initial study I made. I thought you might find a window onto my process interesting.

I always start with thumb-nail sketches and move through a number of steps before arriving at the final painting. The initial, exploratory pencil-work sometimes becomes quite detailed but is never intended to be seen by anyone. It's all about trying to give shape to whatever idea I am fumbling towards and I usually make a number of these drawings. Vertical and horizontal lines are very carefully considered and placed, sometimes taking the Golden Section into account. Linear perspective also has to be carefully adhered to in order to produce a convincing illusion of depth and space. The python painting is an example of two point perspective- that is, all the horizontal lines, depending on their direction, recede to vanishing points far outside either the left or the right side of the image. When I finally think I have things worked out, I may move on to the final painting or, as has been my habit lately, I might produce a small study in oils first. There are no hard and fast rules about how things proceed- it's a process of refining and distilling elements of the picture to arrive at the clearest statement I can make.

I tend to work on two or three paintings at a time so, although the python was the first of the series I conceived, I was also working on a dinosaur and another shark at the same time. The White Shark paintings are, of course, not really all that separate from these new paintings but I'd started them before the versatility of the museum, as an over-arching motif, had occurred to me- and so I think of them as a separate body of work, despite the shared setting. After my last show (and while I was painting the first shark paintings) I was thinking that all this new work would be in some way, even if only tangentially, related to the sea. I even made another pier painting between sharks, which now somehow feels like a waste of time. It's not a bad painting but, in retrospect, it seems like I wandered down a blind alley. Each painting can take three to six weeks to produce and so a mistake in direction can be costly. These things trend to evolve organically and I wish at times that I could just sit down and contrive an entire body of work ahead of time- you know, decide on the imagery, lay out the themes, work out what might be most likely to sell... For some reason it doesn't really work that way.

All of my paintings are grounded in something real. Sometimes a painting is prompted by something I've seen out in the world (as was the case with this painting) and sometimes I have an idea and have to go looking for the real-world details to flesh it out. It's too difficult to convincingly invent the particulars. The most entertaining examples of this lately (for me personally at least) are the dinosaurs. I have little museum-grade replica... "toys", for want of a more dignified word, that I photograph and then exaggerate in scale for the resulting paintings. Yes reader, buying toy dinosaurs is not only a legitimate thing to do but also a tax deduction. It's like a dream come true.

When it comes to the python painting, the general architecture and the glass display case are based on The Museum of Victoria and appear much as they do in life. At the actual location, however, the dinosaur display in the background features a skeleton while the glass case contains two stuffed pythons and also the skeleton of a third. Basically, I've tweaked and massively simplified things to make a better picture. That is, I've changed things to make a more concise statement, both aesthetically and conceptually. You can probably also spot differences between the study and the final painting. I've tightened the composition and further simplified things. The best example of all this is the doorway behind the snake. In the final version, I made the top of the glass case opaque and also moved the edge of the door further to the left so that it wasn't in conflict with the frame of the display case. Essentially, what I did was eliminate visual clutter.

The model for the shark paintings (a large fibre-glass fellow with an engagingly toothy smile) is also at The Museum of Victoria, incidentally- hanging in a very awkward position in the foyer. I wish the museum hadn't moved to it's present location in Carlton. I hate these shinny new, interactive museums. Give me some crumbling Victorian pile any day. It would be far better for the paintings, if not the edification of the general public...

Open Days And Boganburgers...

The second annual Open House day. Thirty-two significant buildings in Melbourne threw open their doors this year for a host of sticky-beaks (Peggy and myself included) to troop through. Thirty thousand people participated last year and I'm willing to bet there were more this time around. At the first building we lined up to look at (the Russell Place Substation) we were duly informed that the cue was two and a half hours long... Needless to say we went off in search of speedier rubber-necking. I rarely even do anything I like for two and a half hours and cueing is most assuredly not something I enjoy. Being able to wander at will around unfamiliar buildings is something I'v always loved. I have these dreams of living in a house so big that I occasionally stumble upon an entire wing I've previously overlooked.

Apart from the obvious enjoyment to be had in exploring these places, my main motivation was scouting locations for new paintings. Museum-like settings. I took a few reference photos in various places before we ended up at Town Hall. Promising glass cases that I can put various critters in and probably produce a somewhat Hopper-esque painting. Overstuffed chairs in front of all that polished wood and glass. Brought to mind some of his paintings of foyers and anterooms. Peggy dutifully stood in as a figure reference. I'll let that simmer for a while. Paintings need to percolate over time. Eventually those glass cases may end up combined with other elements from disparate locations, synthesised into a painting. Or maybe not. It's an uncertain business in more ways than one.

Earlier in the day, I'd spotted a big John Cattapan in the foyer of the RACV building and in Town Hall I stumbled across paintings by Rick Amor and Louise Hearman. How many of these treasures are tucked away in various nooks and crannies in inner Melbourne? Love the crannies.

After all this investigation, we retired to The Napier Hotel in Fitzroy to split a Boganburger. You are what you eat, a member of the Napier's bar staff once told me. I beg to differ but just look at the the thing! I think Peggy's photo captures its true majesty. It's too big a challenge for one mere mortal. Lettuce, tomato, beetroot, pineapple, a potato-cake, a chicken schnitzel, bacon, an egg and steak. As if this weren't enough, it comes with a side order of potato wedges and a green salad! She canna take any more, Captain!

Home in time for Merlin and final of Masterchef. I was hoping the final pressure test might feature the Boganburger but no such luck...

The Church and Idle Worship

I've become addicted to Steve Kilbey's blog, The Time Being. This is a first for me, not being entirely sympathetic (or sympa-pathetic, as a typical Kilbey pun might have it) with technology and electronic media. The recent Church biography (they come on paper between two sheets of cardboard) No Certainty Attached is usually more my speed than all this newfangled zeros and ones based stuff. For those joining us late, Steve Kilbey is the lead singer of seminal Australian band The Church. The Church were the first band I ever saw live and I suppose I've seen them four or five times over the years. Actually, the only band I've seen live more often is probably Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. The quality of those Church performances varied between ordinary and outstanding, perhaps mirroring the quality of their recorded output- although, in my opinion they're in the middle of a real purple patch at the moment. Their most recent, Untitled #23, is a cracking record.

I love every period of their music- I'm even, probably unreasonably, fond of the maligned Sometime Anywhere, on which Kilbey and, at the time, only other remaining member Marty Wilson Piper got electronic and experimental on our arses. There was, admittedly, a bit of an slump post Starfish, post fame in America, and into the early 90's- but the music they've made since then is some of the best of their career. Layered, mysterious, allusive. Kilbey's lyrics hint at places, characters and situations that remain, tantalisingly, vague and out of reach and the music follows. The songs seem to be set in altered realities, parallel worlds- all given substance by the conviction and seriousness of Kilbey's delivery, his caramel, sung/spoken vocals. I love that they've never become Heritage Rock, trawling around the RSL's endlessly pumping out uninspired versions of Under The Milky Way, The Unguarded Moment and Metropolis, as so easily might have happened.

All of that said, I don't rate the man's paintings...