I live in the capital city of Australia — Canberra. It is really not much more than an overgrown country town with a population approaching 400,000. It has changed much in the last ten years and is starting to find its feet as a city, but it’s not really somewhere I’d expect to find a great number of interesting old buildings.
I am learning to love drawing buildings and tend to keep an eye out for subjects when I am moving around the place. In the 35 years or so that I have lived here I had noticed maybe three or four old churches around the place on the usual routes that I drive. I thought perhaps that they might be fun to draw them and set about looking for addresses and details so that I could go and get some photos to work from.
What I discovered surprised and delighted me! Within a few minutes of searching I had discovered somewhere in the vicinity of 18 interesting churches to investigate, and that was not an exhaustive search by any means. I no doubt will have missed some gems. Here is a collage of just a few of the buildings I gathered and photographed a few weeks ago. Stunning, yes?
Canberra is a young city — just over one hundred years old — so I was very surprised to find such a grand number and variety of church buildings. There are of course multitudes of modern church buildings, not to mention the temples of the East and West Asian religions that I didn’t look at. Perhaps they will find a home in future projects. Granted, not all of the buildings I have selected are old, some of the Orthodox religious buildings are relatively new; they are just very appealing to my eye.
It struck me in the process of narrowing down the ones that appealed to me that there was enough variety to create a bigger series of paintings and indeed a calendar. So here we are with he Churches of Canberra calendar project! Between now and the end of October I will be working away at producing at least 13 paintings. Perhaps more, so I have a choice for the final calendar selection. My plan — which may of course be derailed — is to have the calendars available for purchase through my RedBubble store at the beginning of November. Just in time for Christmas!
With the photos in hand I set about creating a master palette to use across all of the paintings so that I have a degree of unity across them all. I practiced colour mixes and narrowed down my choices.
Testing out pens and colour mixes, some will be used a lot, some will be just the odd touch here and there — the Greek Orthodox churches have brilliantly coloured windows!
My dinner plate may never be the same :)Â
I have made a start. The Macedonian Orthodox church in Narrabundah has always been a curiosity for me. I see it from a distance, poking out above the trees, when I drive out towards the industrial part of town to run errands. Up close it looks like a dress with its skirt billowing up. Delightful!
This weekend I am working on the All Saints church in Ainslie, which started life as a mortuary station in Sydney before being transported down here to become a church. Odd history for a church, but the building is beautiful and the large arched window at the front, iconic.
If you are interested in my calendar project, please take a moment to subscribe to my email newsletter so that you can keep up with the updates and release information. This is a brand new list and I don’t intend to write to you terribly often and won’t spam you — I have painting to do — but this is the best way to ensure you get the most up to date information.
Tell me what you think!