While on holiday in Europe during 2010, Joie and Derek stayed in a friend’s village cottage, La Cachette, in the French village of Varzy in the Burgundy region. The village dates from the 1300s and the cottage—a three bedroom, two lounge, two bathrooms and one kitchen cottage of two floors—dates from the 1600s.

During the first couple of days I would go into a room and straighten a piece of furniture in relation to a wall only to find that the piece of furniture was then no longer aligned with another wall. Over time I discovered that while from outside appearances the cottage seemed to be a regular right-angled building, in fact, there was hardly an internal wall that was perfectly aligned.

As a consequence, in the painting of the kitchen above, you can see that the walls and floors, doors and windows, and some furniture is out of alignment. Of course, in the painting I have exaggerated the effect to create an entertaining picture of an otherwise unremarkable kitchen.

Kitchen La Cachette

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Weeping Woman (Dora), (60 х 49 cm, 23 ⅝ х 19 ¼ inches) is an oil on canvas painted by Pablo Picasso in 1937. Picasso was intrigued with the subject, and revisited the theme numerous times that year. This painting was the final and most elaborate of the series. It has been in the collection of the Tate Gallery in London since 1987.

One of the earlier versions was stolen from the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. A famous event in the history of the gallery was the theft of Pablo Picasso’s painting “The Weeping Woman” in 1986 by a person or group who identified themselves as the “Australian Cultural Terrorists”. The group took the painting to protest the perceived poor treatment of the arts by the state government of the time and sought as a ransom the establishment of an art prize for young artists. The painting was returned in a railway locker a week later.

The series are studies of how much pain can be communicated by a human face. It has the features of a specific person, Dora Maar, whom Picasso described as “always weeping”. She was in fact his close collaborator in the time of his life when he was most involved with politics. The Weeping Woman series is regarded as a thematic continuation of the tragedy depicted in Picasso’s epic painting Guernica. In focusing on the image of a woman crying, the artist was no longer painting the effects of the Spanish Civil War directly, but rather referring to a singular universal image of suffering.

Weeping Woman

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Acrylic on canvas: 600mm x 500mm

Shirley Hazzard, born 30 January 1931, is an Australian author of fiction and nonfiction. She was born in Australia, but holds citizenship in Great Britain and the United States. Her 1970 novel The Bay of Noon was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010.

Hazzard was born in Sydney and attended Queenwood School for Girls in Mosman, but left in 1947 to travel through Southeast Asia with her parents. Her first landing was Hiroshima. Her diplomat father took her to Hong Kong, and then she was ‘brutally removed by destiny’ to New Zealand where her father was Australian Trade Commissioner. Hazzard says of her experience of the East that ‘I began to feel that people could enjoy life, should enjoy life.’ She travelled to Italy in 1956, and worked for a year in Naples. In 1963, Hazzard married the writer Francis Steegmuller, who died in 1994. As of 2006, she lives in New York City, frequently travelling to her Italian residence in Capri.

Hazzard is best known as the author of four novels and two collections of short fiction, a body of fiction as distinguished as it is small. Her first book, the story collection Cliffs of Fall, was published in 1963. In 1977 her short story ‘A Long Story Short’, originally published in The New Yorker on 26 July 1976, received an O. Henry Award.

The Transit of Venus, her third novel, won the 1980 National Book Critics Circle Award. Her next novel, The Great Fire, which took her twenty years to write, garnered the 2003 National Book Award and the 2004 Miles Franklin Award. It was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, longlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize, and named a 2003 Book of the Year by The Economist. Her second novel, The Bay of Noon, was nominated for the Lost Man Booker Prize.

In addition to her fiction, Hazzard has written two books critical of the United Nations— Defeat of an Ideal (1973) and Countenance of Truth (1990)—and an account of her friendship with Graham Greene, Greene on Capri: A Memoir (2000). Her most recent work of nonfiction, The Ancient Shore: Dispatches from Naples (2008) is a collection of Hazzard’s writings on Naples, Italy, co-authored by her late husband, Francis Steegmuller.

In 1984 the Australian Broadcasting Corporation invited Hazzard to give the Boyer Lectures, a series of radio talks delivered each year by a prominent Australian. The talks were published the following year under the title Coming of Age in Australia.

Portrait of Shirley Hazzard

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Charcoal and acrylic on canvas: 505mm x 505mm

In a book titled Free Expression in Acrylics authored by John Hammond I found a picture similar to the one above.

To test my ability to paint this sort of landscape using a lot of colour, I hand-copied the picture leaving out some elements from the original. Then, using my own selection of colours had a go at painting it.

I am pleased with the results, in particular, the fountain on the left and the shadow effects on the building behind the tree. I am going to use my learnings to, perhaps, convert into paintings some photographs taken in Europe by Joie.

I notice that the photograph of the painting looks a little blurred. But, I do not know why this blurring is occurring: perhaps the lens on the camera needs cleaning.

Courtyard

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Acrylic on canvas: 300mm x 300mm

When I had finished this painting, I wondered what the picture would have looked like had Picasso painted it as a nude. So, I drew the seated woman unclothed. In doing so I discovered something surprising. Look at Picasso’s clothed picture below, in particular, the woman’s left leg, that is, the front leg. Trace the leg under the clothing upwards from her foot and you will see that it ends where her left knee-cap would be, just underneath her bare left arm.

If my analysis is correct, then it has to be asked: what is supporting the clothing further to the left? It cannot be her right leg since this is underneath, and supporting her left leg. I have no answer to the question. But, it meant that when I drew the woman unclothed I had to do some devious subtle realignment of her left leg from the ankle upwards to match the original clothed version.

When I had finished the picture it looked a little ordinary. So, to brighten her appearance and to add interest, I added a feathered mask to her face. And, I added me into the picture. This time, laying quietly and looking intently and somewhat sorrowfully at the viewer.

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Look below, at my copy of the Picasso painting, Seated Woman.

Not appearing in Picasso’s original is the dog seated quietly in the darkness by her left side.

In fact, the dog is a representation of me.

I intend putting me into every copy of a famous artists work that I paint.

Seated Woman

Claude Monet, was labeled an impressionist artist and is famous for his water-lily paintings done in the years leading up to his death. Claude Monet liked the label impressionist and said, ‘I am, and I always wish to be, an Impressionist.’

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence in the 1870s and 1880s. The name of the movement is derived from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satiric review published in Le Charivari.

Characteristics of Impressionist paintings include relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on the accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles.

In particular, Monet painted en plein air—in the open air—and mostly painted landscapes. It is striking to me how the French impressionists began painting landscapes in a style that really captured the light and Monet’s landscapes, especially those with water in them, really capture the effects of sunlight.

Monet painted this picture in the garden he loved at Saint-Adresse. The woman with the white umbrella is the wife of his cousin Lecadre. Judging by the length of the shadows it was probably painted mid-afternoon. Sunlight bathes the grass and highlights the blossom on the trees. One can almost sense the heat. In this painting can be seen the Impressionist emphasis on the accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities. Look carefully: I am under the tree just to the right of the central tree, sitting on my haunches in the shade.

Woman in the Garden

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Acrylic on canvas: 1000mm x 1200mm

In 1920, Picasso painted a series in oils of females whose limbs were proportionally exaggerated. I really like this one and have copied it in a larger format than the original 92cm x 65cm. Sitting quietly in the background is me: represented as a dog. It has been my recent decision, whenever copying famous artists works, to include a dog as an indication that I have copied the work.

Someone once asked me to imagine myself as an animal. Then I was asked what animal I imagined myself to be. A dog was my reply. In particular, I see myself as a friendly dog. But, like all dogs, capable of growling and biting when feeling threatened.

Acrylic on canvas: 1000mm x 1000mm

Seated Woman

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Acrylic on canvas: 610mm x 760mm

This is a simple portrait in which the male pictured expresses cynicism.

I am not sure the male really has a cynical look on his face, but he certainly was thinking cynically.

What do you think?

Is this a cynical man or simply a man thinking cynically?

Leave your thoughts below.. and please, no cynicism!

Cynicism

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Acrylic on canvas: 1000mm x 1200mm

I’ve been looking at this picture in art books for fifty years and am quite familiar with it. When, in Amsterdam this year I visited The Hermitage Museum (the famous Hermitage Musuem is in Leningrad but they have opened a branch in Amsterdam and transferred some fabulous artwork) where I saw the original.

It was on a wall facing the entry doorway of the museum, and the first thing that struck me was the size of the painting: huge, almost twice the size of my copy above. The red colouring of the picture was outstanding. The combination of the size and colour made the picture memorable. When I inspected it closely I realised how slapdash the actual painting was. The unpainted original canvas could be seen in places and the brushwork could be described as flimsy: more like an underpainting rather than a finished product.

The Dessert: Harmony in Red is a painting by French artist Henri Matisse. It is considered by some critics to be Matisse’s masterpiece. It is an example of Impressionism‘s lack of a central focal point. The painting was ordered by Sergei Shchukin as “Harmony in Blue,” but Matisse was dissatisfied with the result, and so he painted it over with his preferred red.

It was painted towards the end of the Fauvist movement in 1908. A relatively short movement, Fauvism began around 1898 and ended in 1908. Artists of the movement included Andrè Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Raoul Duffy, Jean Puy and of course, Henri Matisse, the founding father of Fauvism. The movement got its name from the French term Les Fauves, meaning ‘the wild beasts,’ after a critic related the phrase to the artists’ first exhibition, in 1905. The Fauvist artists were primarily concerned with a vibrant and intense use of colour, aimed at evoking an emotional response within the viewer. The movement was revolutionary in that it inspired the use of colour as a means of expression, and illustrated the ability to apply point in abstraction.

The Dessert: Harmony in RedThe Dessert: Harmony in Red

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Bridge Road was a focal point for my last school years through to when I first worked fulltime after leaving school. My last years at school were spent at Richmond Technical School just a short walk along Church Street from Bridge Road. At Richmond Technical School I was bullied by a tall blonde haired German kid. I have no idea why this kid who was taller, stronger and more popular than me, kept picking on me. I can remember three occasions when we fought physically; always with his team of supporters giving him encouragement. Two of the occasions, I think, were organised. That is, he would approach me between classes and say something like: if you are not the stinking little coward I think you are you will meet me after school at four o’clock near the trees by the oval. Then, he and his supporters would sneer and wait for a response from me. For some reason, I would defiantly respond with something like: alright then. On the first occasion we stood face to face near the trees by the oval. Instead of waiting to see what he might do, I gave him a short sharp right-hand jab to the nose. He seemed surprised and just took one step backwards. So, I stepped forward and repeated the jab to his nose that began to bleed. Once again he seemed unfazed and just took one step backwards. This pattern of me punching and him stepping backwards repeated itself at least ten times. A old man—a stranger observing the fight between the taller stronger boy and me the shorter skinny boy—said to me, good on yer son. His encouragement made me feel really good. But, just as I felt good the German boy lunged at me and grabbed me in some sort of crushing wrestling hold. Then I was thrown to the ground with him grappling me in some manner so that he had one leg over my legs, pinning me down, with his other leg under the middle of my back and both of his arms bending me backwards over his leg. The pain in my back was excruciating. Do you give up? he asked. Yes, I struggled to reply through my pain. He let me go and got to his feet; and, he and his mates walked away sneering at me and animatedly discussing the killer wrestling hold he had applied.

On another occasion we got into a wrestle as we passed each other between classes. In the struggle my jumper got pulled up over my head as he held me tightly in a head-lock. I wriggled frantically out of the head-lock and with my vision obscured by my jumper, threw a wild punch that hit a teacher on the side of the face as he tried to separate us. On the third occasion, he had arranged an after-school meeting behind the Hoyts picture theatre that abutted the school. I am unsure how I managed it, but, I quickly got the German boy into a tight headlock. Then, I took about six very fast paces forward and slammed him head first into the brick wall of the theatre. He crumpled to the ground. I didn’t wait to see what would happen next; but ran, full-belt through his shocked supporters all the way to home. I learned from this last event that when someone attacks do whatever is necessary to win and get it over with. As a consequence, throughout my life I know that many people have felt intimidated by my demanding and forceful manner in settling issues: an approach that has not endeared me to many people as I seem to change from a cooperative and friendly person to the exact opposite: a demanding and aggressive person.

Other events along Bridge Road were more sedate and all involved work. I sold papers on the corner of Bridge Road and Church Street diagonally opposite the Vine Hotel and just along from the Richmond Town Hall and next door the Richmond Police Station. Recently I read in the Herald/Sun newspaper about a man who was called to perform some repairs to the clocks in the tower of the Richmond Town Hall. He reported finding bullet holes in the face of the clock: all facing the side of the Richmond Police Station. Richmond Police Station officers declined to comment on the findings. About 20 shops up Richmond hill towards the city was the greek-owned fish and chip shop where I used to spend tips given by customers buying papers. The man and woman who ran the fish and chip shop wore white aprons and usually smiled as they sweated over the hot frying oil; and, then using a sheet of shiny white paper to envelope the flake fried until completely devoid of moisture and fat chips and potato cakes. Then the entire package was further enveloped in newspaper so that one piece of fish, sixpence worth of chips and one potato cake came in a package about the size of a small suitcase.

Next door to the Police Station was Hoyts Picture Theatre where I attended Saturday afternoon matinees when I was at school; and evening picture shows for many years after I left school. One of my memories of the theatre was when Chief Little Wolf came to a matinee to promote a film. Chief Little Wolf was a Navajo Indian who had settled in Melbourne and became famous as a wrestler with his Indian Death Lock hold. He was announced in the theatre and a spotlight picked him out as he strode from the back of the theatre, in Indian dress and feathered headdress, down the aisle towards the stage. I stood up in the aisle. Chief Little Wolf stopped and shook my hand—I remember that his hand was warm and extremely puffy and soft—then strode on to the stage. Another strong memory was when I saw Gina Lollobrigida starring in a film with Anthony Quinn as the hunchback of Notre Dame. The strongest memory of the theatre was when I arrived late for the start of the picture. I walked from the light of the lobby into the darkness of the theatre to realise that most of the kids were on their feet dancing in front of their seat or in the aisle. On the screen was a black and white movie of four musicians: Bill Haley and the Comets. The kids in the theatre were responding enthusiastically to a new form of musical entertainment called rock’n’roll. Bill Haley was a big star; and is remembered as being: first band leader to form a Rock ‘n’ Roll group; first Rock ‘n’ Roll star to write his own music; first Rock ‘n’ Roll star to reach the national charts with music he wrote and recorded; first Rock ‘n’ Roll star to own his own music publishing companies; first Rock ‘n’ Roll star to own his own record label and recording company; first white artist to be elected as the “Rhythm & Blues Personality of the Year”; first Rock ‘n’ Roll star to sell a million records; first Rock ‘n’ Roll star to receive a gold record; first Rock ‘n’ Roll star to go on a world tour; first Rock ‘n’ Roll star to sell a million records in England; first Rock ‘n’ Roll star to star in a full length motion picture; first white Rock ‘n’ Roll star to tour with all-black supporting artists; first Rock ‘n’ Roll star to appear on a network television show. Despite this record and for whatever reason, I just didn’t get it, and rock’n’roll and that era—as well as the hippie era, the Beatles and disco—all passed me by with me hardly noticing. And that is a recurring theme in my life: entire episodes passing me by, with me hardly noticing and having no memory of them. Such as my sister Wendy who I think was born in the year I began working fulltime. As a consequence, and sadly, I have no memory of Wendy until she was in her twenties. Even then I remember only some outstanding events: visiting her in hospital after she was involved in a car accident; me letting her use the dance studio for her engagement party to Terry; and, at Brian’s wedding to Carol. Wendy never forgave me for not asking after her kids at that wedding reception. Of course, Wendy had no idea of the strain I was under at the time; and, the fact that my only focus at the time was on me and my problems. Also, I have little memory of Brian except for when he came home from hospital as a baby; and, when I arrived home from driving around Australia some nine years later.

Also, I was a chemist delivery boy for Chandlers Pharmacy near the corner of Coppin Street and Bridge Road. I rode a bicycle—at the beginning, an old heavy girls bicycle provided by Mr Chandler the chemist; and later, my own silver racing bike purchased with earnings from the chemist—to deliver medicines to old people who usually came to the front gate to collect them from me. Also, during school holidays I worked in the shop as a sales assistant. During Christmas holidays I became quite adept at wrapping Potter and Moore toiletries and this became my fulltime job: wrapping Christmas gifts for customers. One Saturday morning I arrived early at the shop and let myself in through the back where Mr Chandler rented the living quarters to a young married couple. Ever helpful, before the other staff arrived I decided to polish the tiled linoleum floor with the huge floor-polisher stored in the cleaning cupboard. From observation I knew that when the handles at the top of the polisher were squeezed the polisher would spin into action. What I did not know was that if I pulled slightly back on the handles the polisher would move gently to the right and if I slightly lifted the handles the polisher would move gently to the left. I squeezed the handles and pulled backwards. The polisher took off at about fifty miles and hour and crashed noisily into a large glass display cabinet. The entire contents—expensive perfumes—of the display cabinet were smashed and the carefully arranged display of toiletry gifts on top of the cabinet were thrown and smashed all over the shop floor. All of this had taken just four seconds. Mr Chandler arrived and asked what happened. I explained. His response was: well, let’s get it cleaned up. The shop opens in a few minutes. The event was never mentioned again.

One day I arrived home from school and mum said something like: don’t pack your bags for school tomorrow, I’m taking you for a job interview. I think that mum had made this decision because of the school bullying. I was taken up Bridge Road to Lennox Street, to Tas Pickett Pty Ltd, a cigarette wholesaler. After a short interview where my mother did all of the talking, I was given a grey cotton work coat and taken to the cigarette storeroom where for the next year or so I was to do stock-taking and filling of cigarette delivery orders. Then, somehow, I was made an office-boy in the accounting section of the upstairs office. Cigarette deliveries were made by salesmen in vans to milk-bar owners and cigarette vendors all across Victoria. The state of Victoria was divided into fifty or so numbered regions; and in each region there were from 30 to 60 vendors. Long before computers were invented and used for storing and searching for information, I found that I possessed a memory for the names of the vendors and their region. This apparently was invaluable since when a telephone enquiry was received, secretaries and other office staff would come to me and say: Papadopoulos of Launching Place. I would respond with: Region 17. They would go the Region 17 filing cabinet drawer and search for Papadopoulos in the alphabetically ordered cards. I would achieve a correct success rate of 90%.

Down the laneway from Tas Pickett Pty Ltd., in Bridge Road, almost opposite the National Picture Theatre was a milk bar owned by Tom Hafey. Tom Hafey was a famous figure in Richmond since he had played for Richmond in the Victorian Football League. In the Richmond Football Club’ golden era in the late 1960s to mid-1970s, Tom coached the Richmond Tigers to four premierships and five grand finals. At morning teatime, Tas Pickett staff would stroll down the laneway to Hafey’s milk bar to purchase a coffee scroll or fruit juice. In 2008, I went to a business lunch where the guest speaker was Tom Hafey. After his very entertaining and interesting speech I introduced myself to Tom and told him that I used to go to his milk bar in Bridge Road Richmond. ‘That’s interesting that you should say that,’ said Tom, ‘you know, over the years, if I had counted the number of people who told me that they went to my milk bar, I reckon that I would have had 300,000 customers through the door. Interestingly though, one bloke met a girl in my shop when he was buying his lunch and they went on and got married. He came up to me recently, 30 years after he met her, and they’re still together with three grown up kids. By the way, did you know George Irish and Bill Smith at Tas Pickett? they were good mates of mine.’

The last influence on my life in Bridge Road was Abingers Auctions. Since we were a relatively poor migrant family from post-war Britain, trying to build a new family future in Australia, most of the furniture that filled our first home purchase in Australia was purchased at auction, at Abingers. My recollection is that the Bridge Road street front of Abingers was two large glass windows separated by two large glass doors. One could stand outside and see the items for auction through the glass windows and doors. On one occasion mum and dad bought a job-lot; that is, the couch and armchairs they wanted together with some other items they really didn’t want, but came as part of the job-lot package. One of the items they didn’t want was a large locked tin trunk without a key; and, neither the purchasers—mum and dad—or the auctioneers knew what was in the trunk except that things inside clunked around when the tin trunk was moved; and, was heavy.

On a Saturday morning after the job-lot was delivered, dad set-about with a chisel and hammer to open the trunk. I was with him as he struggled to ease the trunk open and I felt faintly apprehensive about what we might find. The trunk was finally opened and revealed the following contents: a four feet long length of chain with very thick links, an eight feet long length of rope with a circumference of about a foot, a six foot square oiled tarpaulin and a car jack. It was the car jack that became central to our moving up in life in Australia in, I think, a most unusual manner.

Two pieces of information are needed to understand how the car jack became central to our moving up in life in Australia. First, the house first purchased by my parents was in Alban Street Richmond. Alban Street was really a service lane behind Bridge Road shops. It was the only house in the short street; and, the house was small, old and in a dreadfully run-down condition. The timber foundation stumps of the house had long since rotted away and most of the house sat on the uneven soil of the area. The second piece of information needed is that both mum and dad worked at Pelaco: a firm that manufactured shirts and pyjamas. Mum worked in the canteen on the sixth floor and dad in the storeroom on the ground floor. Because mum worked in the canteen she left work earlier in the day than dad. Dad, walking home by himself, took to taking a different route each night on his fifteen minute walk from Pelaco to home.

In his meandering walks from Pelaco to home, Dad took to collecting detritus left in the streets and laneways and bringing it home. Sometimes he would arrive home with a length of timber, or several house-bricks, a lump of concrete or, once, he arrived with a wooden pallet that someone had discarded. Each Saturday morning, dad would take the aforementioned car-jack and, after digging a hole under the house, would wedge the car-jack into the hole and jack a little portion of the house a few inches upwards. Then, he would hammer a piece of found detritus—a brick or a slab of timber—into the gap. I think that it took Dad about two years of this walking around the streets of Richmond collecting discards and then using the car-jack to lift the house a little to replace worn-away stumps with timber and bricks. What I do remember clearly is that when the house was sold, the entire edifice was about two feet off the ground supported by all manner of detritus; but, cleverly concealed with timber planks around the perimeter of the house; and, at the front of the house a verandah built entirely from Pelaco’ wooden pallets. The verandah had two steps from the front door down into the street. Truly, the Kosbabs had come up in the world.

Bridge Road Richmond

Acrylic on canvas: 1015mm x 1015mm