#lookatglenhuntly

#Lookatglenhuntly is a series of ink and watercolour work on paper currently up at The Bar Royal as part of the Walkabout Glen Huntly street photography exhibition.

Most of these pieces have been done on location using an ink brush pen, or if I had the patience, a bottle of ink and a sable brush. The sable brush is the most effective way to work but it isn't always practical when out of the studio.

I painted on location at Platform 3 on Glen Huntly station looking toward Platform 2 over a couple of days last week.

Others I did from the table inside my studio on Glen Huntly Rd. which looks onto the street and the Royal Avenue corner. I look for interesting and fleeting moments of being.

Go to the Gallery page to see the full series titled Look at Glen Huntly. Or got my shop if you would like to purchase one.

Installation of work at The Bar Royal

And #lookatglenhuntly...why? 

I have asked myself why... why is there an urge to observe and record. What is the point and what does one get from the process of either drawing or painting people going about their daily lives.

For my part, I find it is a way to slow things down, to distill 'micro-moments' of existence, perhaps, to see what they do look like....it is an extension beyond the ordinary.

In looking at these fleeting moments, quite often, the surprising hits upon you, compelling the artist in me, to stay and look further or deeper. Surprising moments in colour, shape, and human drama; surprising for the moments of touching beauty, banal mundanity, intriguing transactions or for just delighting in the comedy of human theatre in the public space.

Much can happen.

Glen Huntly, the suburb, is a space whose urban facade has changed rapidly in a relatively short period of time. As a local moving into the area 20 years ago the nature of the businesses and the pedestrian life has undergone considerable change.

My neighbour Vera, who only recently died, grew up in the area from the early 1920's often remarked that for a long period of time this shopping strip had "everything you could ever need". There was no need to travel to another shopping strip , or mall, to get items needed for daily life...be it groceries, smallgoods, hardware, children clothes, ladies wear, theatre...Glen Huntly had it all.

The theatre was a popular spot for Vera and her friends on Saturday afternoons when she was a young girl; It was located on the site of our Safeway supermarket. For a number of years in the late 1950,s Vera and her husband also ran a business selling jewellery, clock making and in providing watchrepairs.

By the time I settled in the late 1990's change was underway. However, Glen Huntly still had two green grocers ( one on both sides of the railway line), one butcher, Clarke's (or Nick's as we called it), a haberdashery store (a long skinny shop jam packed with bags of wool, cotton needles etc), a hardware store, two cake shops, three chemists, a fish and chippery and a smattering of antique stores, to name just a few notables.

The only cafe at this time was Charlotte's, the French Patisserie. Nancy and Sharon worked the counter serving delectable chocolate eclairs, lattes and babychinos for the kids.

Today, our shopping centre is without a stand alone greengrocer, nor is there a haberdashery, nor hardware store. Op shops and brotherhoods have replaced the antique dealers, and a tobacco business occupies the jewellery store that my neighbour Vera once ran (a shopfront just down from where Woodards is now).

But we do have a Hallal butcher, several Indian and Chinese grocery stores, multicultural restaurants, many cafes and a brilliant new playground within our midst.

The council seems to be more open in their approach to enhancing our locality and there is an ongoing discussion regarding the level crossing. Traffic, or the delays to the flow of traffic due to the crossing are a significant impediment to vehicular movement in the strip.

Pedestrian life is always evolving and with societal issues such as drugs and homelessness, Glen Huntly is not immune to the travesties of life. But with the recent waves of migration and the influx of new residents settling in our suburb to work, study or live, our strip is also seeing new faces full of hope and anticipation for lives just beginning.

Today in Glen Huntly we have rich and diverse community adding depth and a great splash of colour to what I would term 'the Look of Melbourne'.

It is a suburb that epitomises Melbourne's rapidly increasing population and shifting cultural demographic.

#lookatglenhuntly...that's why.

For more Glen Huntly musings read on here Glen Huntly and Mysteries of the Track

The Walkabout Glen Huntly Exhibition is on now and until May the 6th 2018

The Bar Royal

1 Royal Avenue, Glen Huntly

from 4pm Monday - Friday and from 1pm Saturday and Sunday

Mysteries of the Track

It’s Friday night, Derby Day eve.

I’m no punter, yet I love a racecourse. It is a mystery to me, I know.

I like the look of the racecourse, the open space, the greenery of the turf and the white railings circling the tracks.

I like the city track for its urbanity. The distant CBD, its buildings, its cranes, its smog and its blue-grey haze.

I like the commission flats rising up like pop up sprinklers above a flat botanic lawn; they are all beige and boxy; and a bit eastern European in appearance. They guard the perimeter of the Flemington track at odd intervals in the neighbouring suburbs of Kensington and North Melbourne.

I like the Queens Avenue Californian bungalows of Caulfield East, with their second storey bay windows and terracotta roofs peering down onto the far side of The Heath. The avenue meets with the Monash University block and the Metro towers running wires and persons along the Cranbourne, Frankston and Pakenham lines.

I like the members lawn at Caulfield on Cup Day. It is sheltered from the gusty Spring winds and the crush of the outside crowds, albeit, wilting in the sun as the day progresses, and sprawling their fluid limbs across plantar boxes filled with marigolds and the plastic turf of the ground below as the day draws to a close.

I like the fact that a racecourse predates our Southern Cross and Spencer Street stations. Races on Batman’s Hill in a city barely named, let alone formed.

I like the country racetrack, with its low horizon and wide open skies; and the Black Angus studded across the granite soils in the background; and ochre wheat fields and paddocks of grazing ewes and gum trees and dust, and car park mud too; or not, depending on when and where you are, of course.

I like the architecture of the stands, ornate filigree and long wooden benches stepping upwards; the stewards towers and the finishing posts; especially those in the shape of the horseshoe – and the ads; Elders always, the local real estate agents, financial advisors and beer, naturally.

I like the Schweppes Ad at Kilmore.

I like the chrome green John Deere tractors lined up in the middle of a track way out west.

And the country girls with contours in all shapes, colour and dress, lining up for fashion on the fields, waiting to be judged by the owner of the nearest ladies fashion boutique. As judge for the day, she is demure in her refinery and ready for the responsibility she has at hand.

I like listening to the call of a race, on a radio…..I don’t know why.

I like a torrential downpour at St.Arnaud, where everyone one runs to the betting ring for cover.

I like being at Towong when the skies are blue and the sun is shining and news of a ferocious storm ripping through a Flemington meeting filters through; the horses disappeared from the racecallers view, so the crowd at Towong said, and the meeting had to be abandoned.

I like the shady Oak trees at Woolamai in March, and the blazing heat and dust of Dederang in January.

I like sitting on a rug on the grass with my kids, especially when they were little, sleepy and dozing off in the open air.

I like the story of Phar Lap. He was shot at, so the papers said, in a Glen Huntly street on Derby Day 1930. My neighbour was about ten. She remembers the day. Her friend saw it all.

And Feathers, the man up the road, so named for the brightly coloured feathers adorning his hat; his horse trainer grandfather found the cartridge wadding from the shooting. It says so in a book titled A Century Galloped By. He takes me to the page where his grandfather is named in print.

I like the colour and the character of people, all mixed in together, slipping between the veiled layers of place, time and memory.

I like the loneliness, and the camaraderie.

I like the mystery of it all.

Image: Shooting in Etna Street

ink and watercolour on paper

Kate Birrell 2016

Published on the Footy Almanac site here

Footy Finals

Well, I am a bulldogs fan only in so far as I have jumped on the proverbial bandwagon. I suppose it is a bit of relief when your own team bombs out way before there is even a slight chance of making it.

One gets the chance to regroup and take on whoever it is that might seem like a good proposition.

I was curious to see how the Bye week would play out; would interest wane amongst the fans; would the players be affected. In Melbourne there was plenty of speculation in the lead up to the footy free weekend. A lot of it was negative...and, at a gut level, yes I would agree "A bye before the finals, how could you?'

I didn't go to any of the finals games. The closest I got was to the city and the area around Birrarung Marr on the Friday night that the Bulldogs played the Hawks in the semi final on the 16th of September.

The atmosphere in Melbourne on that night was amazing. With so many going to the game, and taking the long walk from Flinders Street Station there was a never ending stream of fans strutting the promenade.

A constant sea of red, white and blue mingled with a bit of brown and gold. The Scrays were perky, ambitious and on the cusp of daring to dream.

It was a balmy night and I found a spot down just beyond Federation square where I did a couple of ink and watercolour drawings on paper.

The distance in being a bit further away was ideal. The actual stadium fell further into darkening background. It was replaced with a cityscape of lamp poles, the lit spire of the arts centre and a variety of of buildings from the Eureka tower on the south bank to the old Herald Sun on the North side of the Yarra.

From these sketches, I was able to work up some more work. Acrylic on canvas paper as the one to the right shows. 

The atmosphere in melbourne during grand final week was intoxicating. I always like the anticipation that leads up to the final game, but this year was taken to another level with the Western Bulldogs having reached this grand occaision.

I was met with many fans saying that even if they don't win that the fact they were in a grand final is ok. Such a momentous time for a team with only one premiership cup in the trophy cabinet.

One Trophy 

September 2016

There are more works in this series, in fact I'm still work ing on some now...four weeks later. I'll post some more when I feel I might be finished with the theme.

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ink and watercolour on paper

sketched as I watched and listened radio and TV

sold

June 2016

Currently cleaning up this site.

Working on Footy paintings for group shows later this year and Still Life works in the studio.

Follow me on Facebook @KateBirrellPaintings for some in progress pics.

And Instagram @lookatmelbourne for sketches

Recent Commission

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Here is a screen shot of a recent commission for a client who required an image to promote an event in Sydney.

Pen, ink and watercolour on paper 2015

Playground at Playtime

Recently, I did some work at the Essendon primary School sketching the schoolyard.

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I have done alot of location work in the form of pen and ink sketches over recent years; beaches, cityscapes and suburban life have been my focus. This is the first time I have ventured into a space that is a little less public than usual.

Interesting stuff happens when you work under the gaze of those around you. The sheilding walls of the studio are suddenly opened and a degree of vulnerability creeps in, which at times, can wind its way into the work itself.

As an artist, you are used to looking at others. But as an artist working out in public, the tables turn, and it then becomes you, the artist, that is being looked at. Sometimes it feels more like a performance.

One of the reasons I like working outdoors, amongst people is that it forces you to commit; to commit to a time and place, to commit to the line that is made on the surface, be it paper or canvas or whatever. It forces you to commit to those around you, you are being watched, there is an interest in what you produce and what you see. People want to see you follow through, they want to know what you think of them and their world.

I like being able to take something that I can see moving and happening before my eyes and being able to take note of it, the fleetingness of a certain moment, punch it out and capture it into a static thing on a flat surface. 

Given the rapidity, speed and pace of daily life there is a perverse sense of satisfaction that I can in some way capture and hold onto these lost moments through the simplest of means in the use of mediums such as basic writing tools, ink and paper.

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Several community artists will have their works available and on display alongside the works of the E.P.S. school children.

Where: Essendon Primary School, Raleigh Street, Essendon

Friday November 6th 3;30pm til 7pm & Saturday 7th November 2pm til 5pm

Flinders Street Corner

For a while I have been working on the small pen and ink watercolours. I wrote about it here

You can also follow Look at Melbourne on instagram.

My plan is to explore Melbourne city and suburbia with pen, pencil, watercolour...whatever is at hand. 

Look at Melbourne; Small Works on Paper

 

Watch my new series unfold as I take to the streets, city and suburbs of Melbourne, with pen, ink, watercolour, and perhaps oil and canvas, in hand. 

The journey begins from Point Ormond, previously known as Little Red Bluff, St.Kilda

Background info:

One of the things that appeals to me about working with pen and ink directly on to paper, is the immediacy of being able to create a work.

It is very much a process of being in the moment and observing, deeply, that which is around you.

 In many ways it is a form of reportage, taking notes and recording the dramas and things that unfold within that environment as they occur; things that are quite ordinary. I try to explore the connections between people and places.

A pen has the capacity to be moved quickly across a page, be it a sketchbook, a dinner menu or an expensive sheet of Arches water-colour paper. The quality of the surface matters little, the execution of line, however, is vital. Perceived errors must be ignored or reconsidered in order to complete the piece.

I see these works as not unlike fine threads, that when woven together create a larger, robust piece of cloth.

It is an enriching process, as it moves me, the artist, beyond the studio and places me very much within the sphere of action.

I become a willing participant within the work.

Follow Look At Melbourne on Instagram.