Painted by a follower of Chardin … me. He knew a thing or two about pictures, and I learn something new every time I copy one of his paintings. Thanks Jean Simeon.
The frame is from the op shop and I painted the picture to fit it. A useful discipline.
Melbourne does a good gloaming. We get the benefit of a flat continent covered in red-orange dust to filter our sunsets.
This is the early evening sun firing up a bottle of dishwashing liquid on our sink. A meditative moment at the end of the day to knit the ravelled sleeve of care, before rolling it up to wash the pots and pans.
Yes, the kitchen tap is an odd shape.
Every house I have lived in has had a bottle of sticky orange liqueur that nobody drank. It sat unchanging in the dark cool drinks cabinet for years and years. Here is our current bottle. I imagine its contents are older than me.
It is in many ways not a nice thing, but I have noticed that if a person enters a room in an impressive military uniform, people tend to listen to them and to defer. I suppose the big shoulders and bright accoutrements of a uniform are designed to have this effect, no matter who is wearing them. Surely we would have had fewer wars if people did not like dressing up and experiencing this.
I would not normally want to be whacked with a bamboo stick, but a rather spiffy kendo outfit might just persuade me to give it a go. It is a bit like becoming a trial lawyer in a Commonwealth country: I am sure more than one barrister has signed up for the tough life of a litigator so they get to wear the wig and gown. And how heartbreaking it must have been for them when wearing such outfits was almost completely abolished.
The poetry of controlled and disciplined violence.
As an old joke has it, the Australian dollar is worth about the same as two flat rocks and a stick. So a Grand Tour is not in the cards anytime soon. However, thankfully a photocopier toner shop in Richmond used to sell plaster casts of the great art of Europe. How convenient.
This is my rendering of one of those plaster casts. It could be me at about 3 o’clock any given morning, as I reflect on the things I have said and done over the last decade or so.
Phil McAloon's paintings 