Ballarat 1998

Commissioned by Ballarat Fine Art Gallery and Ballarat University to do a major painting of the city, I spent the months from January to April 1997 working on site. As I sat on the streets sketching in oil paint, pencil and charcoal, people would sometimes come out from their houses, bringing corned beef sandwiches and cups of tea, and staying to have a chat. All of this helped me build up a picture of the place. Although Ballarat has a number of grand historic buildings that reflect the wealth of the Gold Rush era, I wanted to depict the contemporary city, and the places where its residents were living and working and enjoying themselves at that time.

This was the first time I attempted to portray an entire city, and I found myself working in even greater detail than usual, so that the painting in places has the intricacy of a watch mechanism. At the same time, the complexity of the city’s topography resulted win an unusually complex composition, with a series of sections of the city interlocked together under changing skylines.

As Geoff Wallis, from the University of Ballarat wrote in the catalogue: ‘“Ballarat” is as much a social document as an artwork, and if we are prepared to take the time to examine the physiognomy of the city as laid bare before us much information about the lives and aspirations of its inhabitants may be divined. A city after all is a cultural artefact… and “Ballarat” speaks to us about human relationships as much as about bricks and mortar.’

The finished work was shown in 1998 at the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, and at Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne. It is shared by the University and the Fine Art Gallery.