The  page before this shows a wall mural with a kangaroo, emu and lightning sister on a wall at the house I rented in The Entrance.

The inspiration for that mural was a lecture about Arnhem Land Bark Paintings I gave at Ourimbah Campus in 1996.

That inspiration is still rattling around in my head looking for an outlet and after all this time being too ill to paint new energy has brought it back to the surface.  I went to the shed to see if there was anything to paint on rather than waiting for a break in the poverty cycle so I could buy something

There was a stretched canvas 130cm x 90 cm sitting in the garage awaiting some new image. It had been used during an early experiment in texture-making with acrylics. It was another canvas with a deep and rich under painting . It was perfect for the staining technique of  this image will be built around

The possums must have used that canvas as a platform to dribble spray when the males were covering everything with their musk during mating season. It smells like a distant skunk roadkill and several attempts to remove the reek have just made it worse.

I guess I could sell the painting as a four dimensional object for the collector who appreciates experimental sensory content in a painting. Like those guys who put out plates of feces or dead things. That has to be aromatic! For now that canvas is lost.

There was a very old stretched canvas. Much smaller at 50 x 90cm it is really too small for the kind of work this painting will consist of. There is a sheet of ply which has been serving as a drawing board for works on paper. It is 120 x 90cm and about the smallest I feel comfortable with although again the dimensions are wider than the work requires and will mean a similar layout to the wall where other figures are used to balance the primary image of the kangaroo.That one was partly painted from a step-ladder and had to be broken up into areas. No way I could spend more than a few seconds on a ladder these days. If I could get on it all!

The smaller canvas has also had an experiment in texture built on it and it has then been rubbed flat and over painted with one thin coat of house paint. The old design shows through the house paint as do the brush strokes from the over painting. It looks shabby with only one layer of yellow oxide stain over that.

I am predicting that as the complexity of the surface is built up that shabby looking under painting will begin to add depth and richness. Alternately it could just be shabby when all is done and the under painting will be even deeper for the next painting over the top. It looks as though I will deal with indecision by attempting two kangaroo paintings. It will give me an excuse to push paint around when I am feeling too brain dead to work on more complex stuff I guess.

The picture to the right is from a clear projector sheet of the original bark painting. It is one of a group of Western Arnhem Land Bark Paintings that were a part of the inspiration for the cave and rock art series that covers most of the work on my easels for the time being.

This work is one of a number of bark paintings commissioned in 1912 by Baldwin Spencer at Oenpeli. He was the first European to consider aboriginal art important enough to have it produced for his enjoyment. It is called  Mimi spearing a Kangaroo. I have notes that suggest this style dates back ten thousand years and is dated by the presence of the Mimi hunter.

The lecture notes are not complete and the bibliography was in another envelope with the second section of notes so I apologize that I am unable to give more precise references. The original bark painting was made with red oxide on bark as is typical for the region and period

This part of the series will be painted using acrylic paints with oxide pigment in keeping with the early rock, cave and bark paintings on some level. The paints are dry brushed and rubbed on thinly as stains. It is a tedious process for someone who is not very well but the end justifies the rest and I get that warm all over glow when one finally takes form

(updated Aug 22. 2009) A smaller canvas came to hand and a painting was made on that. As of writing this that painting seems to be incomplete and needing at least one more level of tweaking applied. That story (here)