‘NORVILLE’
(front cover image)
 
It was like an old canvas left lying around.
We don’t know with certainty who first started it,
here on this beautiful flat, surrounded on three
sides by a sweeping bend in Warlands Creek.
 
There’s been no Aboriginal presence but White Man
has messed around from way back – way more than
one hundred years ago in fact.
 
Dave Norvill settled slightly further north west on
Whites Creek but it was HGE Norvill in April 1928
who came to this bend and added to the canvas.
 
They never set out to be artistically creative but rather,
what they intended, was for it to be functional.
A few sheds and a hut to live in. Some fences and yards for sheep, cattle and horses. Some Acacia shade trees.
 
They worked with little budget. There were bills to be
paid and a mortgage. They had to make the bottom
line, be profit.
 
There were to be small changes of similar nature as
the years progressed, but while kept neat, it was
still without a necessarily creative eye.
 
Into the 1990’s the old – now disused - shearer’s
quarters were rotting on their foundations. Something
had to be done – renovate or pull them down. I arranged for a builder to come but it wasn’t until the morning he arrived that I would make that decision.
 
The decision was to not only renovate but we would go
further and separate the old quarters into sections.
It would look better, neater and be more functional.
 
By the time this was done we had four such separate
buildings in a line. One day someone came along and
said,‘Wow, it looks like a little town’. ‘That is the day
‘Norville’ was born.
 
From that day on I have strived to keep painting
this canvass but now it would be with artistic beauty
in mind. Striving not only to make it more beautiful
but to make it more interesting, even intriguing.
 
In my hands ‘Norville’  would and could never be just
a landscape canvas. It had to take on the Surreal.

‘Norville’ my biggest canvas

THE HILL AND THE TOMB
(back cover image)

The top of the 'Norville' Canvas is crowned by The Hill. The Hill and The Tomb, to be my final resting place.
I go to be part of the big canvas. How more
appropriate can it be than that, that I become
part of my biggest work?