Canvas Design Consultants - Book Volume 1

6. BEDROOMS
HANDCRAFTED FOR LIVING
™

7. The Hon Penny Sharpe MLC
Australian Labor Party
New South Wales Legislative Council
Parliament House
Macquarie Street
Sydney NSW 2000
T (02) 9230 2741
F (02) 9230 2589
Penny.Sharpe@parliament.nsw.gov.au
www.pennysharpe.com
The Hon Penny Sharpe MLC
Australian Labor Party
New South Wales Legislative Council
Parliament House
Macquarie Street
Sydney NSW 2000
T (02) 9230 2741
F (02) 9230 2589
Penny.Sharpe@parliament.nsw.gov.au
www.pennysharpe.com
The Hon Penny Sharpe MLC
Australian Labor Party
New South Wales Legislative Council
Parliament House
Macquarie Street
Sydney NSW 2000
T (02) 9230 2741
F (02) 9230 2589
Penny.Sharpe@parliament.nsw.gov.au
www.pennysharpe.com
The Hon Penny Sharpe MLC
Australian Labor Party
New South Wales Legislative Council
Parliament House
Macquarie Street
Sydney NSW 2000
T (02) 9230 2741
F (02) 9230 2589
Penny.Sharpe@parliament.nsw.gov.au
www.pennysharpe.com

10. THE ARTIST
Pro Hart was a passionate man. And his passions were the fuel that drove the creative engine; religion,
paranoia, politics and conspiracies provided the motivation for Pro to translate his beliefs into images. Works
like People Looking For God, The Persecution of Pauline Hanson, One World Government, The Greenies,
The Folly of The TAB, The Last Trump and the Crucifixion were his way of expressing his passions to the
world. One on one conversation was never a strong suit, in fact, he could be downright incomprehensible,
leaping from one thought to another with no particular logic, but painting allowed Pro Hart to
centralise his statement and lay it out for all to see.
Painting was Pro’s way of conversing. It was easier for him, and much clearer for the audience. Painting forced
him to concentrate on one topic, make one point. It was also how he made much of his political comment. It
was how he stood up to the shift boss, extolled his religion and supported his causes. Recipients included
Lindy Chamberlain, Pauline Hanson and any number of conspiracy theories.
The main body of Pro’s work is Naive in style and Pro was essentially a narrative painter who used the
landscape and mining scenes as a backdrop or stage to tell a particular story. Paintings such as Racetrack,
Townscape and Bush are filled with the characters of his childhood and big occasions like Menindee race
day or from Broken Hill. He retained them all; from the playful drunks and kids playing, to the couples singing
and grandma asleep in her chair. The public loved it. Not the art establishment who complained of him being
too commercial, too prolific, but the middle-aged middle classes who were coming into their own with a
little spare money and were spending it on art. Pro certainly identified with them, and to a certain extent he
painted for them.
THE RELIGION
Pro never called himself a landscape painter. Indeed, he hated the label because he felt it limited what he was
trying to say with a painting. Almost all of his work was a comment; the landscape merely a platform for the
characters within. Because that was his true driver; to articulate a message to a wider audience that he, a shy,
Like many artists before him, religion drove much of Pro Hart’s work. Both in terms of his energetic fervour
in incorporating so much religious iconography and his quite equal disdain for the organised side of religion.
Clearly his early life at the hands of the Marist Brothers in Broken Hill had an impact. He never spoke about
it much and would actively avoid the subject if he could. One might idly speculate about the fierceness of
Pro’s Studio c1980 - Detail
a Marist brothers education in an outback town in 1940. Certainly his family, and son John in particular,
remembers gruff references to a ‘cruel place’. Raylee, his wife, talks of a tough place where strong ideas
came up against rigid discipline where the cane was reached for fairly quickly if you stepped out of line.
Religion for Pro was personal. Something he adhered to, spoke up for but tended not to judge others with.
As a boy he was uncaring at best about religion, and it wasn’t until his early adulthood in the mines that he
discovered the two passages that seemed to provide the tipping point to his enlightenment. He found them
in Matthew, and they formed a distinctive guide that shaped much, if not all, of his life:
“Take therefore ye no thought for tomorrow.”
To Pro this meant paint in the now, let God guide your hand and aim for spontaneity.
“Judge not that ye be not judged.”
He seemed to genuinely hold on to this thought, very rarely moving into a position of judgement about how
others lived their lives. His political comment was more about the power wielded by the few rather than an
inherent criticism of an individual.
There is no dispute that Pro hated formal religion and all the associated iconography. The central religious
theme in Pro’s work is that you cannot experience God in any meaningful way by simply attending church and
saying the prescribed prayers. God was something that could only be experienced by personal revelation and
faith. The images of Crosses and Nuns were put in to highlight a system of belief that rang hollow.
The Eternal Now - Detail

12. Helen Crossing
Creat in g I n spirat io n al W o rkpl aces BSc, DipEd, MEd, MAPS
Managing Director
Suite 5, Level 2, 65 York St
Sydney NSW 2000
P: + 61 (02) 9223 2611
F: + 61 (02) 9223 2363
E: helen@hcaconsulting. com.au
www.hcaconsulting.com.au

16. T
Terra Incognita
The Campsite, Oil on Board, 68cm by 43cm
The explorers arrived at Coopers Creek on 11 November 1860 – the beginning of the hot season. Wills
documented temperatures exceeding 100 with the highest hitting 109 in the shade.
Where To From Here, Oil on Belgium Linen, 120cm by 130cm
The Terrain, Mixed Media on Italian Canvas, 150cm by 150cm
Shortly after leaving Coopers Creek, the party found themselves battling ridges of loose sand up to 20 metres high.
Night Sky, Mixed Media, Oil on Linen, 123cm by 92cm