Paintings

For many years my wife was a leading local landscape artist and after I retired,we took photographic excursions to gather material for her paintings. After watching her at work, I decided to take up the brushes too. Oil painting was a bit difficult, attempting to put colour on colour and blend it on the canvas as she did, only resulted in mud so I took up acrylics which dry quickly and so are much easier to work with. An excursion to the Flinders Ranges in South Australia resulted in some magnificient work by her (all were sold soon after so I can't show them to you) and some street scenes by me of local towns undertaken as exercises in perspective. Most of these too have been sold but I took photographs of most of them so I can show them to you.
The Little town of Quorn, near the Flinders Ranges and home to the Pitchi Ritchi Railway, a railway which winds through some of the foothills and is run by a group of amateur enthusiasts. The painting is a street scene outside the railway station and includes the local Post Office and, further up the street, one of the local pubs
Further west, near Lake Frome stands the tiny township of Parachilna which a few years ago (and about 5 years after our Flinders visit)was the venue for the Opera in the Bush featuring Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. Some artistic licence was taken since the roof had the name emblazoned on it, I left it out and put rust there instead. The site now has a modern motel
Closer to home (Canberra) there is an historic town of Braidwood. The main pub is still operating but the main subject here was an old coaching pub, now housing arts and crafts shops. Again, some artistic licence was used to replace the bitumen road with gravel.
This waterfall was done with palette knife, a bit like laying cement on with a trowel. The paint needs to be fairly thick, without any thinning medium
This old house was near Melrose in South Australia, artistic licence turned the green fields into desert sandhills
This old house was near Blinman in South Australia, actually, according to the map it was Blinman but the town of Blinman North (which is now known as Blinman) is located close to the old copper mine a few Km up the road