Month: February 2022

Still life with apples, bowl, and a Honda three wheeler

February 27, 2022

I remain in awe of the work of Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin. This is my effort at copying one of his still lifes (lives?) with some apples that are now more than two hundred years past their Best Before date.

Homage to Chardin. Yes, that bowl, that goblet and that shelf AGAIN.

I have mentioned before that I need to take a break from painting every now and then. I recently built a tiny version of a Honda K360 three-wheeler. Here it is, posing in front of a painting I did of the car park entrance to Keisei Ueno train station. I have said it before, and I say it again, we need more paintings of underground car park entrances.

Powering through mid Showa.
Surely one of the most beautiful car park entrances in the world.
A little bit of country in the middle of the city.
Honda KA360 from a kit issued by KA Models from South Korea. A joy to build.

Potter Point

February 19, 2022

I have a theory that the extent of the climate catastrophe has escaped many of us simply because so much of nature remains so abundant and beautiful that it is hard to believe it is in crisis. It remains, for the moment, a most picturesque, slow motion car crash.

This is where the boundless blue Pacific Ocean (Tasman Sea division) crashes into the cliffs at Potter Point, near Kamay. I understand Kamay is the local Aboriginal word for Botany Bay. It is a beautiful word.

Kamay: not just insta-worthy, beautiful too

The scaffolder – Hi Vis portrait #6

February 12, 2022

I am not sure how the scaffolder on the local building site would react if I complimented him on the graceful cascade of raven black hair tumbling from his top knot. Perhaps not entirely well.

He also has the eyes of a saint.

This is the sixth and last in my portrait series recording the crazy neo-Georgian hairstyles and retina-scorching hi-vis fashions of the local building industry during the COVID pandemic. But if the health and safety industry introduces any new hi-vis colours, I may revisit this fecund genre.

Not everyone can pull off wearing clothes the colour of a highlighter pen.