Quokka – Page 7 – James Foley

Here’s the cover for issue 669 of the Quokka newspaper– the theme was Foundation Day, a public holiday in Western Australia. Like last week’s cover, this is a reference to a famous image- this time it’s a painting by George Pitt Morrison called The Foundation of Perth.

The original painting tells a story from the early history of Western Australia- on the 12th of August 1829, Mrs Helen Dance, the wife of the captain of the HMS Sulphur, cut down a tree to commemorate the founding of the colony. Apparently the tree was close to where the Perth Town Hall now stands. I think that’s the Narrows off in the distance, and Mt Eliza- which is now Kings Park. There’s not a hint of an Aboriginal person anywhere.

Sculpture – Quokka clay model

Here’s a model I made in clay sculpture class at the Fremantle Arts Centre. It’s one of my characters from the covers I do each week for the Quokka newspaper.

He’s not painted yet, but he’s been fired in the kiln and come out looking spiffy.

It’s been an eye-opener to go from working in 2D to 3D.

Quokka- tools and construction

Apologies to Charles C Ebbets.

Quokka- junior footy

Junior footy= Australian Rules. To avoid any claims of bias, I avoided the colours of our two West Australian teams- the Eagles and the Dockers- and opted instead for green and gold, the colours of the Melville Hawks.