Building Investigation 10

Dawes Point Playground

gouache, micron pens, cold press paper

8"x 6"

The Dawes Point Playground piece was the tenth sustained investigation of a series of 15 and I chose to "investigate" buildings from my childhood in Sydney that held meaning to me. Dawes point reserve is a park in downtown Sydney that is located right under the Opera House side of the Harbour Bridge. Whenever my school had field trips into the city, we would get picked up and dropped off at Dawes Point reserve, and when we were especially little we would play on the canons or toss a rugby ball around there. I was inspired by this location because of the childhood memories I have there, and that it serves as a very unique perspective of the Harbour Bridge an otherwise iconic sydney landmark.

I couldn't exactly paint the memorable buildings of Sydney without painting the Harbour Bridge, but I wanted to use a unique perspective as the harbour bridge is super over played and can come off boring from certain angles. I wanted to continue with the big bold skies and the recurrent and recycling lines that are seen throughout the piece. I really wanted people in my school uniform colors to be involved in this piece as that is how I remember it, filled with life.

I like this piece and I think I'm starting to fully understand the SI project better as we get into it more, as I have started to focus on re-emerging elements such as the lines and skies, I feel like my pieces are better connected. This was hard to get done, because with school skiing and all my other homework, there isn't much time to sit down and do art, but as skiing is wrapping up, I'm able to spend more time fussing over finished products, but overall I'm fairly pleased with this work.