Painting at Hill End with Amanda

A series of watercolours of the area around Hill End mostly completed in Sydney after visiting APH at Hill End in June 2006.

The small square paintings are the official "Painting at Hill End with Amanda" series of 24 currently languishing in storage.

Holbein and Jacques Blockx (and maybe some Old Holland?) watercolours on Sennelier HP, CP and a small number of RP Watercolour blocks - now sadly unavailable at least in Australian retail.

Hill End is losing some it's high tableland isolation, so attractive to some of us, with the sealing of a large section of the road from Turondale.

If you don't know about Hill End, which occupies quiet a special place for many artists in NSW, there is a small Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_End,_New_South_Wales
and a local site: www.hillend.org/.

It is an old gold mining town which attracted artistic attention firstly with Donald Friend in the 1940's and later with others, now with continuing artistic associations with residencies.

Unfortunately for my current puposes there doesn't seem to be anything habitable for sale (there is land for sale on the Mudgee road, but we're not up to building just at the moment and need something that we can move into).

Finding pretty little cottages in rural Australia is not easy, as we are discovering (we didn't think that it was but it's even harder than we thought). One very quickly understands the practical appeal of colourbond and hardiplank and kit homes even if one doesn't always appreciate the results. I look longingly, online, at the stone built fix-me-ups of the Loire! But having only menu and metro French and not being able to hammer a nail without bending it make those a dream too far.

The photos are in the wrong order; I expect to be beta-blogging for at least the first hundred posts! Thanks to anyone who persists through them.