Storm warning, Goat Island

I haven't been back to my studio at Moore's Wharf for over a year now.

Last year was a bit of a nightmare, as my mum became very ill and
was in and out of hospital throughout most of 2012.
I was only able to go out painting occasionally, and when I was able to, I painted at Rozelle, Eveleigh or Pyrmont, rather than at Barangaroo.
I posted some of these on my Industrial Revelation blog.
It's difficult enough to keep posting on one blog, almost impossible to cope with two.
I finally returned last Friday, and started a large panorama of Goat Island from the knuckle of the wharf.

Work in progress -

This was how the painting looked at 10.30am

'Goat Island from Moore's Wharf' 2013 

oil on canvas 45 x 92cm

Enquiries about this painting :

info@franceskeevilgallery.com.au

I probably hadn't picked the best day to do so.
The sky looked like a purple bruise.
But I tried to do as much painting as I could before the inevitable storm.

Work in progress -

This was how the painting looked at 11.58am

'Goat Island from Moore's Wharf' 2013 

oil on canvas 45 x 92cm

Enquiries about this painting :

info@franceskeevilgallery.com.au

The yellow buoys and boom contrasted well with the sullen sky and choppy slate grey sea.
The boom is there to prevent pollution by debris from the excavation of sandstone blocks for the Barangaroo Headland Park next door to Moore's Wharf.

Work in progress -

This was how the painting looked at 11.58am

'Goat Island from Moore's Wharf' 2013 

oil on canvas 45 x 92cm

Enquiries about this painting :

info@franceskeevilgallery.com.au

Fortunately the blokes soon moved their car so I could see the little hut at the far left hand edge of Goat Island. I didn't want to move from my sheltered nook behind the pallets as there was obviously very little time left before the storm.
Just after 3pm a bolt of lightning struck in the distance.
The thunder was so loud that it sounded like a cannon had been fired.
By the time I had packed up all my paints and brushes I was soaked.

'Goat Island from Moore's Wharf' 2013 

oil on canvas 45 x 92cm

Enquiries about this painting :

info@franceskeevilgallery.com.au

My next solo exhibition "From the Hungry Mile to Barangaroo" will be held from 1st - 24th March 2013 at the Frances Keevil Gallery, Bay Village, 28-34 Cross Street Double Bay, NSW 2028, as their signature event for Art Month.

Transmogrify

'Transmogrify'  is a combination of 'transmigrate,' (to pass from one body into another) and 'modify,(to change the properties, form, or function of )

To transform into some other person or thing, as by magic; convert or transform in general.
To completely alter the form of.

Starting painting "Panorama of Moore's Wharf and ships" oil on canvas 25 x 152cm

This canvas was started on 2 August 2011, but has been through quite a number of permutations and still isn't finished. I wanted a record of the hidden side, the working side of this lovely heritage sandstone building, and I kept changing my mind about what to include or leave out. So buildings, boats and trucks got painted in and out dozens of times.

It's been a wrestling match between me, the surroundings, the workers and the canvas!

This is the original idea for the composition.

The perspective was complex and challenging, even before people started to move things around.

Then 'Fast Eddy' parked his truck in front of the blue container...
The bottom right hand corner of the canvas looked a little empty anyway, so I started to paint the truck.

Then the truck left before I had a chance to finish painting it.
'Fast Eddy' didn't know exactly when he'd be back, or whether he'd be with or without his truck or where he'd park it. So I scraped the truck off with a razor blade, to remove the lumps and bumps and give a good surface for the next application of paint. A frustrating day spent scraping off paint and re-applying it without making the painting any better.
The lone fisherman on the end of Wharf 8/9, Walsh Bay Wharves opposite called out to me as he left "Skunked?"
"What?!" I called back. There were a few little fish in the water, but no skunks. I wondered if he was referring to me and what he meant by it. I was unsure if I should resent it or take it as a compliment.
Apparently to be "skunked" is to go home without catching at least one fish!
No, I didn't "catch any fish" that day. However by pulling this painting apart and putting it back together again I've learnt a lot about perspective problems, plein air painting, the wharf and how it works.

The truck has been excised and I can now turn my attention to painting the 'Shirley Smith'.

The brilliant red and yellow of the 'Shirley Smith' is a delight to paint against the cobalt blue sky.

However, the format of this canvas is an extreme horizontal panorama, and now the brilliance of 'Shirley' threatens to overpower everything else in the painting.

I increase the size of the Moore's Wharf building to balance the composition.

It still needs some tweaking. I've added a little orange pilot boat, the "Port Jackson" between the crane and Moore's Wharf.

This is a small oil study from another angle of the "Port Jackson" being lifted back into the water after the blokes had finished cleaning her. I was made to move my position, as I would have been in the way.

However, the bottom right hand corner still looks too empty to balance the composition...

Fortunately 'Fast Eddy' brought another truck back, and someone obligingly left the little yellow forklift in front of the north end of Moore's Wharf. Now there might be enough red and yellow on the right hand side of the painting to balance the 'Shirley Smith'.

This painting has turned into a monster, eating my paint and my precious time.

I've no idea whether I'll ever be able to finish it, but it's been an ever changing record of everything that has happened on the wharf over the last couple of months.

Related posts

Sitzkrieg

View from the ivory tower

"May close without warning" My Solo Exhibition at the Frances Keevil Gallery

Bacon and Eggs in Miller's Point

Power Base - Artist in Residence at the White Bay Power Station

Cut off

1. To remove via cutting.
2. To isolate or remove from contact
3. To end abruptly.
4. A designated limit beyond which something cannot function or must be terminated
5.  Break a small piece off from

At 4pm last Friday afternoon, I arrived back at Moore's Wharf after a day spent putting the finishing touches on my enormous painting of White Bay Power Station.
I saw a crane through the trees of Clyne Reserve, the pocket hankerchief size park next to the Sydney Harbour Control Tower.
The men in the workbox were from Telstra. They were removing Telstra's communications equipment from the strange little "belt" around the waistline of the Tower.
There is something symbolic about the phones being cut off in a building devoted to communications. 

"Sydney Harbour Control Tower and Clyne reserve" 2007 oil painting on canvas 46 x 36 cm SOLD

This is the Tower in earlier days when East Darling Harbour Wharves were still operational.
I have been told that everything has to be stripped out of there by the end of September.

The Barangaroo Development Corporation want to buy it, if they haven't already done so.
The prospect of its demolition inches ever closer.
Won't be long now.
I wonder if it will last until the opening of my exhibition?
I'll be showing other Barangaroo paintings from the 11th -30th October 2011 in my solo exhibition "May close without warning" at the Frances Keevil Gallery,Bay Village, 28-34 Cross St, Double Bay 2028.

Enquiries : info@franceskeevilart.com.au
"Sydney Harbour Control Tower is looking at a fall"
Henry Budd: The Daily Telegraph August 05, 2011

Related articles

• Power Base - Artist in Residence at the White Bay Power Station (janebennettartist.blogspot.com)
• Artist in Residence at the White Bay Power Station - Part 2 (janebennettartist.blogspot.com)
• White Bay Power Station : Inside Out (janebennettartist.blogspot.com)
• Power House (janebennettartist.blogspot.com)
• View from the ivory tower (barangarooartist.blogspot.com)
• Bacon and Eggs in Miller's Point (barangarooartist.blogspot.com)

Bacon and Eggs in Miller's Point

After hearing disturbing rumours about the future of the Harbour Control Tower, I arrived at the crack of dawn  to check that my easels on the top floor and the Tower itself were still standing.
By 8am I was tempted by the delicious aroma of a breakfast fryup of bacon and eggs wafting from the Argyle Cafe on the corner of Argyle and High Streets.
A good old fashioned breakfast in a good old fashioned suburb.
After breakfast I decided to look for a spot to paint and wandered only a couple of metres away from the doorstep.
The giant mushroom head of the Harbour Control Tower loomed over Munn's Reserve, the odd little park I had so often noticed without bothering to find out its name. It perches on top of the land bridge above Hickson's Road and consists of a couple of trees, a patch of lawn, a seat or two in the middle of heritage cobblestones and railings.
On the western edge of Munn's Reserve, is the Palisade Hotel, which has recently been renovated with a charmless canopy that sits like a badly fitting cap over its crenallated roof. Now it lies dormant, its future as uncertain as the rest of the suburb.
Yet another "pub with no beer". I have just completed a painting of the "Terminus Hotel", a derelict hotel in Pyrmont, another former working class suburb which has been gentrified beyond belief.
If the Tower is demolished for access to the Barangaroo Headland Park, it would be difficult to predict the effect on the surrounding streets.It wouldn't make economic sense to start trading amidst all the confusion and noise of demolition and construction.
I thought that I should take the opportunity to paint the area in what might be some of its final moments of peace and quiet.

Painting 'Munn's reserve Millers Point'2011 oil on canvas 31 x 31cm

Some of the patrons of the Argyle are watching me paint while they polish off their breakfast. I can hear fragments of muttering "Wonder when she'll stick the trees in...not bad...is she going to put the old Palisade in? And then a few familiar voices - a couple of people who bought some of my paintings at the "Trains, Cranes and Ships" exhibition on Observatory Hill, which is just a couple of hundred metres up the road. This show was in December 2007, just after the wharfies left the East Darling Harbour Wharves for Port Kembla and Port Botany, not really that long ago, but already it seems like a bygone era.
More familiar faces - some of the Sydney Ports  workers from Moores Wharf just down the hill have also been raising their cholesterol with a bacon and egg breakfast. Apparently they had also bought some of my paintings from the same show.
I must really take up the kind invitation to paint Moore's Wharf as soon as possible.
If the Harbour Tower goes, there could be increased pressure to vacate Moore's Wharf. After all, it has been moved once already, so the precedent has been set.

Starting the Painting 'Munn's reserve Millers Point'2011 oil on canvas 31 x 31cm

A calm winter morning. Sunny, but clear, crisp and cold. I think that you can tell this with the colour palette of this canvas. Unfortunately I have chosen a shaded spot which makes it even colder. I rush to finish and choose another position for the afternoon painting, but the chill is making my fingers slow and clumsy.

Painting 'Munn's reserve Millers Point'2011 oil on canvas 31 x 31cm

I use the cold as an excuse to drink some more of the Argyle's delicious coffee. It warms up my fingers and I finally get my act together and finish my canvas.

'Munn's reserve Millers Point' 2011 oil on canvas 31 x 31cm
$990
SOLD
Enquiries about similar paintings

I've just sold this little painting at my exhibition "May close without warning" in the Frances Keevil Gallery.
To the far left is a sliver of the Palisade Hotel, but in this work I wanted to dwell on the unexpected aspects of Miller's Point rather than the more obviously famous landmarks.Behind the gnarled trees and sandstone pavers, the workers terraces of Merriman Street are bathed in the cool winter morning light.
At the moment Miller's Point still possesses the raffish charm that its more famous and uglier sister suburb, The Rocks, has now totally lost. It is still quiet and quaint, and the people in the streets are mostly residents and local workers rather than tourists. What a difference a couple of hundred metres can make.
But for how long?

Related articles

• A Tale of two Pyrmont Hotels - 'The Terminus and the Point' (janebennettartist.blogspot.com)
• Artist in Residence at the Aroma Coffee Festival - the Post Mortem (janebennettartist.blogspot.com)
• The Empty Wharf (barangarooartist.blogspot.com)
• View from the ivory tower (barangarooartist.blogspot.com)
• Bacon and eggs in Miller's Point Part 2 (barangarooartist.blogspot.com)
• "May close without warning" My Solo Exhibition at the Frances Keevil Gallery (janebennettartist.blogspot.com)
• May close without warning - Part 2 : "All that is solid melts into air" (janebennettartist.blogspot.com)
• Cut off (barangarooartist.blogspot.com)

The Empty Wharf

Ghost Tower

The empty wharf' oil on canvas 25 x 51 cm 2009

It's finally happened.

Sydney Ports Corporation has moved out of the Sydney Harbour Control Tower at Barangaroo and into their spiffy new purple and silver premises at Port Botany.

The mushroom head of the tower now stands, isolated on the empty wharf, looming above the holes and piles of demolition rubble starting to accumulate around its base.

The construction workers and excavators appear like rats nibbling away here and there until the entire complex collapses.

There was no fanfare or publicity to mark the end of an era.

Only an eerie silence.

Painting Miller's Point from the top of Harbour Control Tower New Year's Eve 2010- Part 4:Through a glass darkly

Painting on New Year's Eve 2010 from Amenities Level at the top of the Sydney Port's Harbour Control Tower.

Painting on New Year's Eve 2010 from Amenities Level

at the top of the Sydney Port's Harbour Control Tower

Painting of Barangaroo at sunset, waiting for the fireworks.

People have gathered on the 'knuckle' of North Barangaroo to see the fireworks. When this area was still an operational port, the wharfies and their families used to sit here and have a picnic outside the now demolished Shed 3.

The parade of tall ships and other Heritage Fleet vessels decked out in fairy lights, sailing the length of Sydney Harbour, is my favourite part of the whole celebration.

Self Portrait with painting of Sydney Heritage Fleet with fairy lights.
One of my traditions is to paint the fireworks on New Year's Eve and other major celebrations from the vantage point of the top of the Sydney Ports Corporation's Harbour Control Tower.
This may be for the last time.
There are no guarantees that this Tower will have any place in the redevelopment of Barangaroo. If it is to be retained, what function will it serve?
The interior spaces of both the amenities floor, where I paint, and the top floor, where the port operations are carried out, are very snug, to say the least. There isn't much room. The Tower is a magnificent observation post with breath-taking 360 degree panoramic Sydney Harbour views, but the number of people that could visit at any one time would be severely limited. I am worried that the Tower would be seen as being not economically viable to maintain in the new Barangaroo.
It could be demolished at any time after April 2011, which is when all the port operations will be finally transferred to Port Botany. Even if it is not immediately demolished, it will be inaccessible for a couple of years while major earthworks will be disrupting the Northern end of the Barangaroo Headland. The sandstone escarpment will be buried in earth to provide a slope down from Merriman St to the new shore of the Barangaroo Headland Park. I wonder how the inhabitants of the quaint little terraces in Merriman St will cope? They are a stoic, laid back bunch, but these changes will be traumatic.

Happy New Year!

Painting Miller's Point from the top of Harbour Control Tower New Year's Eve 2010- Part 3 : Panorama

Painting Miller's Point from top of Harbour Tower.
A small study of the rooftops of the heritage Miller's Point terraces. This painting is still unfinished but is well underway, and has already helped me to sort out some potential problems with the large panorama.

'Miller's Point from the top of the Harbour Tower' 2010-11

oil painting on canvas 61 x 183cm

Painting Miller's Point from top of Harbour Tower. This is my painting for the late afternoon, with the shadows lengthening along the roads and carving strange shapes into the tin rooftops. I want the gold of the last rays of the setting sun to glint on the rooftops and warm the cold brick and tin. For this painting marks the end of an era for Miller's Point ; possibly for Sydney itself. Love it or hate it, things will never be the same.
I can see already that this painting is going to be a lot of hard work.
The previous small studies were to give me the courage to start this.
I have chosen a panorama format canvas for this composition, 3 times as long as it is high. The vista spans the Sydney Harbour Bridge, parts of the North Shore, Miller's Point, Walsh Bay Wharves, the Rocks, Observatory Hill,some of Sydney's CBD and Barangaroo.

It will be the quintessential Sydney Harbour painting; from the old Sydney to the new; from skyscrapers to dinky terraces; from pub to park to carpark;from road to wharf to sea.

From the sublime to the gorblimey: Sydney from top to bottom of the harbour.

Detail of 'Miller's Point from the top of the Harbour Tower'

2010-11 oil painting on canvas 61 x 183cm

Detail of 'Miller's Point from the top of the Harbour Tower'

2010-11 oil painting on canvas 61 x 183cm

A ramshackle row of terraces contrasts with the lumpen apartment blocks behind them.

Painting Miller's Point from the top of Harbour Control Tower New Year's Eve 2010- Part 2: Moore's Wharf from the eye in the sky

Painting on New Year's Eve 2010 from Amenities Level at the top of the Sydney Port's Harbour Control Tower.

Painting Moore's Wharf and the Sydney Ports Corporation

Emergency Response Tugs while waiting for the 9pm fireworks

My easel is set up in the lunchroom of the amenities floor.

I am short, and the window is small and tantalizingly high.

I spent the next 8 hours literally standing on tip-toe, painting the view.

When I was younger, I spent several years at ballet class, not realizing that training my calf muscles not to protest would ever come in handy later on as an artist.

A bird's eye view of tugs and workboats

Moore's wharf has a fascinating roof structure - very tricky perspective from above.

From ground level, the building's curve is not immediately apparent.

As expected, the parade of tugs arriving and departing drove me bonkers.

When one would finally return from an outing, they would dock it in the opposite direction to how it had been when it had set out.

Just to annoy.

Art and life
I tried hard to take a photo of both the canvas on my easel with the view. The combination of the high set of the window, the narrow working space (the door is directly behind me) and the dark interior compared with the glaring light outside made this my puny camera's best effort.

It's interesting how even in this age of digital photography, something as slow and old-fashioned as painting can still be more effective.

The human eye has no trouble combining a dark interior scene with an extremely light exterior into a cohesive image - but the camera does.

People endlessly nag "Why paint on site? Why not just take photos?" Well, this is one example of the limitations of photography. Add to the dark/light problem, the glare of glass, and the smeared and grimy windows, and any photos taken through these windows are barely adequate as memories.

It helps when painting this series of works from this vantage point that I have already painted everything in this area before. Singly, in pairs and in groups of three! The buildings, the boats, the wharf, the water - from almost every possible viewpoint and in every season and weather.

Painting Miller's Point from the top of Harbour Control Tower New Year's Eve 2010- Part 1: Nice Rooftops

I arrived at the Harbour Control Tower very early for New Year's Eve - about 10am and left after 4am. It was a very long day and a night and a day up there.

A small study of the rooftops of Miller's Point.

Unfinished oil painting on canvas 25 x 20 cm

Painting Miller's Point from top of Harbour Tower.
Starting a new canvas. I'm going to paint a very large panorama of this area while I still can. The perspective is going to be very tricky so I'll try a few smaller works first.
I can't help thinking of a hapless overseas star being asked the inevitable question by some hack before they had even got off the plane - "So....What do you think of Australia?" The snappy answer to the stupid question was "Nice rooftops" I can't recall who it was (John Lennon?)

Comparing art with life. I'm standing on a chair to compare my painting with the view outside.

I had to stand on a chair to paint this work as the windows are a bit too high for me to see the terraces. I'm 5'1"- short, even for a woman.

Exactly the same height as Toulouse-Lautrec.

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

from top of the Harbour Control Tower "

2010 oil painting on canvas 36 x 46cm

In the afternoon I start another small canvas. A small study of the rooftops of the heritage Miller's Point terraces and the former Bond stores of the Walsh Bay Wharves. The roads curve towards the Opera House in the middle distance.

White Ship with Black Hawks-The 'Pacific Jewel' at Barangaroo

'Pacific Jewel at Wharf 5, Barangaroo, with Black Hawk helicopters' 
2010 oil painting on canvas 31 x 103cm

$3,500

Catalogue number 34
Exhibited "May close without warning..." Frances Keevil Gallery

Enquiries about this and similar paintings

Buzzing Around

A training exercise (hopefully). This happened several times during September - November 2010. Must have scared the passengers out of their wits! The huge Black Hawk helicopters reminded me of giant blowflies buzzing around a flaked out sunbather.

Strangely enough, not long afterwards they had a real problem. Something mechanical went wrong with the Pacific Jewel. I don't know whether it was an engine problem or a propeller problem, but the ship had to cool its heels for quite a while, first at Barangaroo, then for over a week at Glebe Island and finally at Captain Cook dry dock over at Garden Island. I have painted an example of each site, and will post them at my other blog Industrial Revelation  soon.

This is painted from just inside the LendLease enclosure at the north-western end. I was chased away from the demolition activity down at the southern end and was grateful for all the aviation activity to add a different focus to the painting.

The diagonals of the white tents contrast with the darker, more classically inspired dockyard bond stores and historic hotels of Millers Point and Hickson Road to the right of the canvas. 

A light pole neatly bisects the canvas into new wharf to the left and old (or comparatively old) buildings to the right. LendLease had just finished removing all the powerpoles from their section of the wharf, leaving just a few of the yellow bollards sticking out, uselessly. In the centre distance of this painting, you can see some of these relics standing like a few jagged broken teeth in the toothless jaw of an old wharfie.

I must say that I don't care much for the Palisade Hotel's newly renovated roof garden. The shade sails might be practical but they spoil the charm of the stepped roof line, giving it a blocky, squared off look. However this will probably be the least of Millers point's architectural problems given all the changes in store for this previously sleepy and overlooked area.

My Paintings in the Xmas exhibition at the Frances Keevil Gallery

My Barangaroo paintings for sale -
Open until Friday 24th December 2010

Stormclouds over the wharf 2007 oil painting on canvas 61 x 91cm.

Enquiries about this painting 

The last of the cranes of East Darling Harbour. All three were formerly painted red. During the last operational month of Darling Harbour in September 2007, they were painted yellow and placed on the barge, the 'Seatow', escorted by the tug 'Koronui', and floated down to Port Kembla.

'The empty wharf' 2007 oil painting on canvas 61x 91cm

Enquiries about this painting 

This painting of the wharf after the stevedores left in October 2007 has an eerie classical calm - a cross between the haunted plazas of de Chirico and Jeffrey Smart's  primary coloured geometric constructions. The Harbour Control Tower joins the procession of power poles as though they were a row of Doric columns in an ancient Greek or Roman temple.

Frances Keevil Gallery:

  http://www.franceskeevilart.com.au/Jane_Bennett.htm 

Email : info@franceskeevilart.com.au

Recently Sold Paintings from the Sydney Open : The Hungry Mile and Barangaroo

Not all of these paintings were displayed at the '30, The Bond' during the Sydney Open, but were sold to people who saw my exhibitions and later made enquiries to my gallery. I was kept quite busy the next week - paintings were flying around like frisbees!
A large canvas exhibited at 'Workplace6' during the Sydney Open also has just been sold. Not bad for a one - day show with no publicity or invitations!
See my other blog: 'Industrial Revelation'
Recently Sold Paintings : Pyrmont paintings at Workplace6 

'L3 Crane and shed 4' oil on canvas 31 x 23cm SOLD

As well as the usual plein air painting problems of avoiding the wind and sun, I had to try not to be mown down by forklifts. After a while I had worked out safe observation points all over the wharf, depending on the type of ship/cargo, time of day and weather conditions. This was painted between Shed 4 and 5, looking north towards the west end of Goat Island. There was no ship in and no cargo inside Shed 4, or I would never have been allowed to paint there. Usually this area was full of cars, boats and containers; and I would have had to paint against the wall of the shed or inside the yellow workcage. One of the workcages is against the left hand side of the shed.

'The 'Coral Chief' from shed3' 2006 oil on canvas 31 x 25cm SOLD

I painted this from beside the west roll-a door of shed 3, , looking directly south towards the P&O offices that were in shed 4, in the centre of this painting. The 2 cranes are (from left to right) “L1” and “L3”. The Chief ships usually only came in on the weekend, and normally docked at shed 3. This particular vantage point was excellent on a hot summer morning with a brisk nor-easter, provided that there was no ship berthed at No. 3 and that there were no steel coils or timber stored inside the shed at the time. The shed would shelter me from the worst of the wind and the sun wouldn’t be in my eyes.

The Tug 'Karoo' from Darling Harbour 2006 oil painting on canvas 28 x 36 cm
SOLD

The ‘Karoo’is one of the smaller tugs on Sydney Harbour, (but only in comparison with tugs like the majestic ‘Woona'). Up close, of course, the ‘Karoo’ isn’t really small! It is one of the ‘Wallace’ stable (a division of ‘Adsteam Marine’ based in Port Kembla) All of the names of the Wallace tugs start with the letter ‘K’, and are derived  from Aboriginal names for localities in the Illawarra area. I believe that 'Karoo' refers to a lake around the Illawarra region.

The ‘Karoo’ was only to be seen comparatively rarely and for brief moments from East Darling Harbour, usually while shepherding one of the blue ‘NYK’ line Ro-ros to and from the wharves at Glebe Island, as I have depicted it here in this canvas.

 The 'Koranui  ' 2007 oil on canvas 25x31cm SOLD

This is the tug which towed the barges with the last of the cranes. down to Port Kembla.

The ‘Karoo’ and the ‘Woona’ were the two tugs used in the last major port operation of Patrick (OK- technically speaking it had by now become ‘Asciano’ of Toll Holdings) ,which was towing the ‘Seatow’ barge with the last of the wharf cranes on it, escorted by the tug ‘Koranui’ to Port Kembla, when East Darling Harbour Wharves closed.

'The 'Woona'  2007 oil painting on canvas 20 x 25cm

SOLD

The 'Woona' with the Talabot 2009 oil on canvas 20x25cm

SOLD 

My tug paintings were immensely popular with galleries and collectors, and I'm often asked for a ‘set’ of the ‘Wilga’, ‘Wonga’, ‘Woona’, or for 3 or 4 different angles of the same tug.

'The tug 'Wonga' with 'Victorian Reliance'' 20x25cm SOLD

  

The most familiar tug, during my period as ‘Artist in Residence’ on the wharves of East Darling Harbour, was the ‘Woona’, which seemed to be used for almost every one of the gigantic bright red Wallenius Wilhelmsen Ro-ros. The other tugs were harder to spot and harder to paint as I saw them less often and for shorter periods of time. The next most commonly spotted tugs were the ‘Wilga’ and ‘Wonga’, followed by the ‘Wolli’ and the ‘Watagan’. 

Enquiries about these and other paintings:

Frances Keevil Gallery