Artist/Gallery notes
This is part of a series of paintings inspired by Tim Winton's wonderful book 'Cloud Street' This is from the chapter 'The Shifty Shadow is Lurking'. "Sam's father Merve had been a water diviner. He went round all his life with a forked stick and a piece of fence wire, and when he was sober he found water and fed the family on the proceeds. He was a soft, sentimental sort of man, and he never beat Sam. The boy went with him sometimes to watch that stick quiver and tremble like a terrier's snout and see the old man tugging at his beard as he sang 'Click Go The Shears' and tracked back and forth across the sandy coastal plain. Sam followed him, loved him, listened to him talk. He believe deeply in luck, the old man, though he was careful never to say the word. He called it the shifty shadow of God."