Oil on canvas, stretched and ready to hang.

Signed on the front.

I want the artwork to provide an alternative narrative pathway to the dominant Sidney Nolan/ Sunday Reed narrative, but also to remember the beautiful, brilliant, but chaotic and conveniently side lined bisexual Sweeney Reed.
However it is an artwork not a documentary so I want it to be symbolic and to imply rather than to be literal and illustrative so that's why I have a nude woman representing maybe Sunday Reed or maybe even Mirka Mora.
I guess I want this painting to be a love letter to those two crazy brave matriarchs of the post war Melbourne art world, Sunday Reed and Mirka Mora, as much as it is a love letter to those three very complicated and brilliant men, Barrett Reid, Sidney Nolan and Sweeney Reed.
The building in the back/ middle ground is the old Heide farm house, (now Heide gallery), formerly owned by Sunday and John Reed, the scene of the famous summer of 47, with Nolan painting his Kelly's, Barrett Reid just turning up while hitch-hiking from Brisbane to Adelaide at the age of 18, rumours of rampant sleeping around and artworld families, wannabes and hangers on turning up so that the parents and others could get plastered in a discreet location.
Some say Sidney Nolan was sleeping with Sunday Reed that Summer, some say he would walk arm in arm with Sunday during the day, for the sake of appearances, but shared a bed at night with Barrie Reid, the dashing young 18 year old hitch hiker from Brissie.
Well, it was 1947 Australia and it was well known that Sunday liked her stable of artists to present an appearance of family values.
Then there were the stories of the brilliant, beautiful but very troubled Sweeney, adopted by the Reeds from Joy Hester and her partner Gray.
Sunday tried to coerce him in to a marriage to a suitable wife, but a fast bisexual drug and alcohol fueled life style brought it to a tragic end.
When I see photo's of him as a handsome young man in the latest clothing fashion of the 60's, holding the latest fashion in landline telephones, play acting his disastrous role of art dealer, that John and Sunday Reed tried to conjure out of thin air for him, I feel a painful jolt empathy and sorrow.
I wish I could have reached out to him... except that really I've never been much good at helping anyone.
I wanted to reimagine the Heide farm house with a 'beat' at the front door and the NGV further on down the road.
I guess you know a 'beat' is a homosexual cruising area.
If you cycle along the Yarra trail at templestowe road or westgate park on the arvo of a week day, you may wonder why there are so many cars in the car park, many with a middle age man in them in a state of hypervigilance, you may see a male or males wandering off in to thick shrubbery. These places are 'beats'.
Anyway, surprise, surprise, being the instinctive contrarian that I am, beats aren't really my cup of tea, the very obvious way in which every male has to instantly make their intentions clear I find predictably tiresome.
So I've reimagined beats as well.
In this artwork, beats are places where males go to become absorbed in themselves, to get into their own zone, maybe find therapy in contemplation and reflection... and if some sexual encounter does occur it is entirely unexpected and far more pleasurable and exciting because of that.
It's at this point I realise I'm on to a narrative that no one will be interested in.
No easily accessible high stakes heterosexual narratives, no reassuring cliches about gay men such as:
'They're like rabbits you know, they're insatiable with their promiscuity and sexual urges'.
So now that I realise I'm on a narrative pathway that no one will be interested in but an alternative narrative pathway that I find therapeutic, a place where a sort of intellectual, cerebral rehabilitation can take place, I realise I'm creating a painting for me only (and hopefully you as well), so I might as well concentrate on creating imagery that is therapeutic, that rehabilitates my soul and spirit, but also seems to make a noticeable difference in helping me sleep at night. (But that's a story for another day).
Surprise, surprise, I don't like contemporary nude photography, every model has been to the gym to remove all individuality from their body, that expression on their face when they're being photographed says:
'I'm a capital M Model'.
It's not my cup of tea, I prefer photographs that are 80 or 150 years old, people who may be very handsome in an incidental, unselfconscious way, who have turned up to be photographed with their clothes off.
Once again I'm off on some alternative narrative pathway that I'm sure has no currency in 2024.
I liked your interpretation of the two men wrestling, one half of the body is engaged in conflict and contest, the other half of their body is finding a place that is erotic.
Maybe the purpose of this artwork is to accentuate that.
There's something about replicating old photographs that fits with my retro personality.
I was looking through YouTube videos of Don Johnson in Miami vice
I'm sure actors were better looking in the 80's
Hmmm, eye contact. I tend to see eye contact as a bit of a chore, work that has to be done to pass as normal.
I rather liked the jolting jarring jazzy way I created a sense landscape with a sense of depth and distance.