Day 72 Wednesday

Today marks the start of a countdown of the last two months of my trip. I’ve completed thirty-five small panels and two big ones on canvas so far, as well as a handful of gouaches and studies. I’m still not sure what the show is going to look like, as I still have a lot of big ideas that I haven’t tackled on a large scale. I’ve ordered another ten big canvases and when they arrive I think the ball should start rolling rapidly. Even though it was really windy today, I took jumpin’ joan out to Merbein and painted this vineyard from the passenger seat.

Day 72 Tuesday

This past week has been overcast and rainy and I have been spending most of my time in the studio working on the big paintings. Nothing to put up just yet, but today there was a break in the clouds and I headed out to Orange World to paint this small oil on panel.

Day 65 Tuesday

After taking Joe and China out to roundabout, the local household tip, I saw them off on their way back to Sydney. I finished up some paperwork and got my Blake entry to the postie and sent off. Then I got stuck into painting, and the more and more I looked at ‘the robber barons’, the more I thought that it might be done. I’m putting it up because I’m onto a new painting now and need to let this one simmer for a while.

Day 64 Monday
I went out to Orange World again today and they were quite happy for me to explore and paint to my heart’s content, which is what I did. I was going to shoot some videos as well, but was itching to get back to my studio, as Joe and China were planning to stop in on their way back from the Alice and I wanted to make sure the BBQ is in perfect working order.

Day 62 Saturday
I went to Wentworth again to take part in the sesquicentennial celebration, and even though arriving after the parade had finished, I sketched some of the tractors parked in the middle of the main street. I walked down to the riverfront and saw the old paddle steamer called ‘Ruby’ doing its best to cart a load of paddleboat aficionados up the river. Getting hungry, I grabbed the second to last steak sandwich that was available and then wished I hadn’t. I’ve never had such a bloody tough steak in all of my life! I drove back to the studio and finished the gouache I had started of a vineyard and then worked on the large painting of ‘the robber barons’ the rest of the night.

Day 61 Friday
I was supposed to be painting an orchard up near Wentworth today, so I headed out early and stopped in at Artback in Wentworth for some brekkie. After getting filled up and chatting a bit with Steve and Mary about the 150th celebrations happening tomorrow, I headed out to get some painting done. The guy whose orchard I was to paint never called, so I pulled off the road at Curlwaa on the way back to Mildura and painted a nice little orange grove there. After finishing up I drove back to my studio only stopping for some mandarins and chook eggs at a roadside stand.

Day 60 Thursday
Another beautiful day of sunshine brought me out to the orchards, and I drove north to Orange World to chase up the friendly folk and paint their fifty acres. I didn’t know where to begin, so I paid my ten dollars and with my complementary cup of fresh squeezed orange juice jumped on the tractor-drawn wagon to take part in Brian’s tour of the orchard. Before we set off he played us his original song about Mildura on his six-string, and then off we went to the accompaniment of a rhyming dialogue on the history of his family interspersed with titbits on the orchard itself. After the tour I stumbled into the orchard with my painting gear and found a quiet spot to paint the prolific navels hanging from one of the 10,000 trees, but not before scaring a roo that was lounging between the lanes. I finished up and headed back into town for some laps at the aquatic centre and a shower, and then headed out for a night of culture at the Art Vault. There was an opening for a Slovenian artist Marco and a local girl based in Melbourne, Nikita, and the work was brilliant. Both of the artists’ work contained plenty to talk about, bold narrative in the case of Marco, and subtle push and pull of charcoal and watercolour in the works by Nikita. I had a chance to meet lots of the movers and shakers within the local art scene, and afterwards we came back to my studio and had a bit of an after-party with Rowan giving the fiddle a go and some Johnny Cash sing-along on the guitar.