Waves on the rocks sound like applause. From the next bench over the sound of voices arrives and I know there are two people sitting there but I cannot hear what is being said. The breeze is on my skin, and in my ears it is like tiny thunder. Someone walks by wearing sneakers and I hear her footfalls on the concrete pavement. Down at the pool a young, fit man has just left the water. He has tattoos on his chest and he walks up the incline and then on the path with bare feet. Children’s voices emerge from the park behind me. An old man wearing a cap walking on the path says “Good morning” to me as he passes. Two sulphur-crested cockatoos alight in two trees, calling to each other with raucous voices that sound like something hard tearing. Notre Dame cathedral is burning but I am on a park bench at Shelly Beach admiring the blue.
Back on the main drag where all the shops are I eat some sushi with the friend I had come down to meet and then on the way to the train station she ducks into the op shop and a bit later I follow her inside. My friend is looking through pictures stacked in a basket near the door. She takes out a few items. On the shelf above the room is a large landscape that she likes. On the wall there is a kitsch street view with what looks to be a representation of a place in Hanoi. We carry the pictures – these two plus two prints of Monet paintings that are framed elegantly, and a piece of framed embroidery depicting a Japanese Buddha with Mt Fuji in the background – to the counter and she pays with a transaction card. The woman behind the desk goes to a room at the back of the shop and finds a large bag for us to lug the big pictures home in. The train is all stations to Hurstville then after that it skips a number of stops and we get off near the airport and walk through a park to my friend’s apartment.
Once we are inside she gets a black plastic electric drill out of a cupboard and some packets of screws and other random hardware out of a drawer in a low table. I put a narrow bit in the drill and ask for a pencil. She chooses the places she wants me to hang the paintings and I set about putting into the walls the screws she needs anchored to hang them on. There are six things to hang and I find six odd screws among her stuff. The Monets go up in the bathroom. The landscape and the Asian street scene go up in the living area. The Buddha goes next to the front door. Another picture goes up in the kitchen.
When the work, which she supervises, is done, she is demonstrably happy with the result. She says it is “yuanfen”, a Chinese word that means something like serendipity does in English but with the added implication that the purchases were fated to take place. And it might well be true. The same day as the day before our Shelly Beach outing, in 1874, Monet’s 1872 work 'Impression: Soleil levant' (which translates to 'Impression: Rising sun') went on exhibition and French critic Louis Leroy coined the term 'Impressionists'.
After we put away the tools we head to the supermarket to buy food – fillets of a fish with reddish flesh, a range of different mushrooms, a packet of pine nuts, a bottle of olive oil – then carry our purchases back to the apartment. Once inside, I help by cutting up some carrot. Then I cut corn kernels off their cobs and cut up the fish and peel some cloves of garlic. I take an already-open bottle of chardonnay out of the fridge, screw off the cap and pour myself a glass.
While she attends to the cooking I look up two artists whose work I think the landscape resembles: Albert Namatjira and Hans Heysen. There is something about the trees in the work she purchased. She comes to the dining table and looks at the images on my phone. She discovers that the oil painting she has just bought is a copy of a Heysen. The original is titled ‘Droving into the Light’. Where she had been happy she is now mildly outraged but her disappointment is temporary when I point out that many artists copy the work of famous painters. That, I say, is how they learn. I also note that the copy is a good one and only cost $35. After the meal has been eaten I leave to go home on the train and she looks up more information about Heysen. When I get home she messages me: “He is very very good.”
In the end the art delivered what it always promises. Whether it’s a Medieval cathedral or an amateur’s copy of a realist painting, art is objectively valuable and it means something to us all. And a day spent in the sun by the sea is a blessing even if it is unseasonably warm.
Back on the main drag where all the shops are I eat some sushi with the friend I had come down to meet and then on the way to the train station she ducks into the op shop and a bit later I follow her inside. My friend is looking through pictures stacked in a basket near the door. She takes out a few items. On the shelf above the room is a large landscape that she likes. On the wall there is a kitsch street view with what looks to be a representation of a place in Hanoi. We carry the pictures – these two plus two prints of Monet paintings that are framed elegantly, and a piece of framed embroidery depicting a Japanese Buddha with Mt Fuji in the background – to the counter and she pays with a transaction card. The woman behind the desk goes to a room at the back of the shop and finds a large bag for us to lug the big pictures home in. The train is all stations to Hurstville then after that it skips a number of stops and we get off near the airport and walk through a park to my friend’s apartment.
Once we are inside she gets a black plastic electric drill out of a cupboard and some packets of screws and other random hardware out of a drawer in a low table. I put a narrow bit in the drill and ask for a pencil. She chooses the places she wants me to hang the paintings and I set about putting into the walls the screws she needs anchored to hang them on. There are six things to hang and I find six odd screws among her stuff. The Monets go up in the bathroom. The landscape and the Asian street scene go up in the living area. The Buddha goes next to the front door. Another picture goes up in the kitchen.
When the work, which she supervises, is done, she is demonstrably happy with the result. She says it is “yuanfen”, a Chinese word that means something like serendipity does in English but with the added implication that the purchases were fated to take place. And it might well be true. The same day as the day before our Shelly Beach outing, in 1874, Monet’s 1872 work 'Impression: Soleil levant' (which translates to 'Impression: Rising sun') went on exhibition and French critic Louis Leroy coined the term 'Impressionists'.
After we put away the tools we head to the supermarket to buy food – fillets of a fish with reddish flesh, a range of different mushrooms, a packet of pine nuts, a bottle of olive oil – then carry our purchases back to the apartment. Once inside, I help by cutting up some carrot. Then I cut corn kernels off their cobs and cut up the fish and peel some cloves of garlic. I take an already-open bottle of chardonnay out of the fridge, screw off the cap and pour myself a glass.
While she attends to the cooking I look up two artists whose work I think the landscape resembles: Albert Namatjira and Hans Heysen. There is something about the trees in the work she purchased. She comes to the dining table and looks at the images on my phone. She discovers that the oil painting she has just bought is a copy of a Heysen. The original is titled ‘Droving into the Light’. Where she had been happy she is now mildly outraged but her disappointment is temporary when I point out that many artists copy the work of famous painters. That, I say, is how they learn. I also note that the copy is a good one and only cost $35. After the meal has been eaten I leave to go home on the train and she looks up more information about Heysen. When I get home she messages me: “He is very very good.”
In the end the art delivered what it always promises. Whether it’s a Medieval cathedral or an amateur’s copy of a realist painting, art is objectively valuable and it means something to us all. And a day spent in the sun by the sea is a blessing even if it is unseasonably warm.
Above: The visitor shelter on Shelly Beach sits next to the rocks.
Above: A Norfolk Island pine in the park at Shelly Beach with a council ute parked under it.
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