Loo Door

66 x 92 cms  1996

Gift

People ask me where I get my ideas from - I don't 'get' them, I glance up and the painting is, suddenly, simply there in front of me, like this loo door in Mount Compass, SA.

Later, attempting to resolve a compositional aspect,  I might try and work out why that particular thing was so overwhelming at the time and at that stage it is easy to put words around it, to explain it. But thinking and writing about it doesn't change the painting itself.

I painted this in a light and airy room behind the reception area of some new office premises we had just leased in Mount Compass. I used to paint away, muttering to myself, and the door buzzer would go and I'd stroll out into reception just as if I was a proper receptionist. I wore black so I could go over paint splatters with a Texta.

Fortunately, by this time, most of Ken's accounting clients knew me and my work, so it became quite fun. A problem arose, however, when, having smothered the door with a densely textured layer of dirty white and then covered that with a layer of thick dark brown, I crouched forward and vigorously scratched the graffiti into the paint, just as the original graffitist had done, and all these flakes of paint missed the drop cloth and got into the nice cream carpet.

The painting was included in my first solo show at Art Images in Adelaide and, as the director, Colin Burgin, said he liked it (nobody else did), I gave it to him.

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