Social Distancing, Coastal Style
From dark times come luminous paintings.
From dark times come luminous paintings, 2515 Coast News reports.
Artist Christine Hill likes to sketch life as it happens.
Thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, for the past 18 months, it’s been happening close to home, which has led to a collection of about 50 artworks capturing scenes in and around Thirroul.
“It’s been a strange time, but it has been interesting to observe what I’m calling ‘Social Distancing, Coastal Style’,” Christine says.
“I’ve been doing lots of outdoor sketching –sometimes creating paintings later in the studio – so that, as well as good-sized oil paintings, there are many small watercolour sketches, all illustrating the strange emptiness of our little world here on the coast these days.”
So what is social distancing, coastal style?
“It’s not terribly distant, actually,” she says, laughing.
“People are very conscious of keeping the distance, that’s for sure. But we’re realistic.
“When we’re out there in a sea breeze, standing ranged along the foreshore at Thirroul Beach, you can still talk to strangers or people you know, and feel you’ve done something in the day.
“We meet so many locals and their dogs we never knew before, and some days there is almost no traffic noise!
“It’s a funny sort of reversal of community – you suddenly see who your neighbours are a bit more.”
Christine’s sketches of Thirroul Beach range from still summer mornings to days of storm and ragged surf; from holiday crowds to carefully placed surfers.
“It’s not really a series,” she says. “It’s just what I do, I paint what’s around me. And there’s inspiration everywhere some days.
“A couple of weeks ago, it was a pretty silvery sort of day. Walking down Cliff Parade there’s one of those little reserves that’s a building block that never got used.
“There’s a single tree there and a bench. And there was someone sitting there, socially isolating from a person with a dog, five yards away.
“It all just tells a story.”
Big sky inspiration
“My work is always influenced by the light and the sky,” Christine says. “So, blues, silvers, greys, there’s plenty of those colours.
“I look at the environment and I want to paint things that impress me. I don’t want to paint ugly. I’m not one to paint the ruins of a bushfire.
“That’s nothing I’d want to look at on my wall. And I think most people are like that. So, I just look around and see – actually it looks lovely to see the beach empty or see just two people sitting down, five feet apart.”
Her aim is simple: “Just recording our lifestyle here. It’s quite nice. We’re very fortunate.”
Changes in Covid time
“Sketches of our beachside lifestyle have been mostly – except for the Australia Day weekend – devoid of crowds,” Christine says.
Even the escarpment took on a different aspect last year, as tiny creeks began to run down the hillsides again.
“We went up to explore the fire trails… about May 2020. That brought out a couple of paintings for me – it was just so peaceful, so lovely.
“There had been a bit of rain and the streams were starting to trickle.
“Strangest of all was Sydney CBD with no tourists on the Opera Quays.
“I delivered a picture to the Art Gallery, and I wandered back down there.
“There were just two people where there’s usually hundreds.”
Christine is thankful for the freedom to “just be creative”.
“Just the opportunity, to be able to do it when some people can’t do anything,” she says.
Exhibition postponed
Originally, the plan was to hold a show at Clifton School of Arts in September.
“It is such a beautiful venue,” Christine says.
“I’ve got about 50 paintings, including lots of small ones. There’s quite a lot that are new.”
She remains optimistic, despite lockdown being extended: “Well, everything’s getting tidied, labelled, framed … and it’ll happen next year.”
Christine has been dropping her works to Robyn Misios at Beach Framing Thirroul.
“She’s been a lifesaver … she’s very obliging and practical and sensible. She’s good.”
Her artworks come in various sizes. The smallest are 10cm sq watercolour sketches that were done ‘en plein air’, the French term for painting something outdoors, from start to finish.
For those who enjoy ‘plein air’ painting, Christine also recommends on-location drawing with the Urban Sketchers community.
“There’s a fabulous website where people in cities all over the world gather together. Perhaps we do it once a month, when we’re allowed, and go sketching somewhere all together.
“It’s an urban painting. We might meet in Bulli, have a quick coffee and then go and sketch to the buildings, the streetscape or something for a couple of hours, and then come back and go, look what we’ve all done.”
Life as we know it
Christine Hill is a prolific curator of life on our creative coast, capturing everything from early morning pools to escarpment sunsets.
Many people will know Christine from her involvement in local events. She’s on the committee that organises the art show for the Lions’ annual Seaside Festival (sadly missed in 2020 and 2021) and, in between lockdowns, she has led watercolour workshops at Clifton School of Arts.
Readers have probably seen her work at Thirroul Newsagency or Collins Booksellers. Christine illustrated the book My Thirroul: Tales from the valley of the cabbage tree palms, by the late Don Gray OAM. Her paintings brought his memories – including of the time a circus elephant escaped and got stuck in the lagoon – to life.
She’s also written and illustrated her own paperback, The Journey of Tom Thumb II: Bass and Flinders explore the Illawarra coast, March 1796. Publishing the story of the explorers’ adventures in a tiny wooden sailing boat – including getting dumped on Towradgi beach – drew on her long-time love of painting boats.
Before moving to the South Coast, Christine lived in Avalon, finding endless inspiration in Pittwater scenes, and she is a Fellow of the Australian Society of Marine Artists (FASMA).
However, after 18 years in Thirroul (“I’m still a newbie,” she says, laughing), her focus has adjusted, although she’s still drawn to water and capturing the essence of local beaches.
“There is a little bit of sailing out of Wollongong Harbour, but then they all go out to sea. My marine work is more of the total landscape now. It’s about people’s relationship with the ocean, more about sitting by it, sitting in it, looking at it.
“I’m not painting boats so much anymore.”
Except possibly for one iconic local vessel – the surf club’s rubber duck.
In 2019, Christine’s oil on canvas, IRB Championships, won Wollongong Art Gallery’s Postcodes from the Edge prize.
She’d planned to use her Postcodes prize money to sail to Melbourne aboard an 1874 Tall Ship, part of Sydney Heritage Fleet.
“I was due to go on a nine-day voyage on the James Craig, the sailing ship at the Maritime Museum. And then two days before, cancelled.
“That would have been nice, and I would have had a whole suite of paintings of the ocean voyage, but it hasn’t happened.
“So we’re all at home, making the best of it.”
Grounded in Thirroul
“Going further afield is out of question. So here I am. My husband and I usually walk a circuit of the town every morning and often stop for a coffee. In between lockdowns, it was easy to just to take my sketchbook and do something.”
One of her favourite walks is along the beach from Thirroul to Austinmer in the afternoon, when the foreshore is in shadow.
“There’s lovely, soft colours late afternoon.
“That inspired one painting in Social Distancing, Coastal Style.
“It’s just been about looking around, seeing what’s there.”
