The side of a historic building in Yass has become the canvas for a large mural dedicated to the memory of local region artist Kim Nelson, reports arts editor HELEN MUSA.

Kim Nelson, a painter and former manager and curator of historic house museums such as Cooma Cottage, was the driving force behind YASSarts and Sculpture in the Paddock.

He was named Yass Valley Shire Citizen of the Year in 2013 but died unexpectedly in 2015 at the height of his career as an artist.

He has since been honoured through public memorials, music and a significant retrospective at the Tyger Gallery in Yass.

The large mural project was spearheaded by the artist’s daughter, Caitlin Nelson, but the work itself has been painted by his niece Katherine Nelson, who has drawn on motifs from his artwork, specifically Burnt Sienna, The Red Shawl and the self-portrait, Tendine.

According to Caitlin, the idea of a mural in honour of her father had been conceived early on, with the possibility of using the side of the Oddfellows Building in Comur Street made even more appealing because Nelson had long located his art studio on the second floor of the hall.

Nelson’s long-time friend Rosemary Hodgkinson owned the building and gave her blessing to the project before she herself died in November.

“I reached out to Yass Valley Council for permission, showed them a plan and told them all about dad’s work,” Caitlin told me.

Further help came in the form of $1000 from Southern Tablelands Arts, additional funds from YASSarts, the donation of coloured paint by Dulux Australia, and the use of a scissor lift from local business Agnew Hire Yass, essential for Katherine, who completed the painting alone.

Ross’s Relics, the antique business adjacent to the hall, also helped by allowing their yard to be cleared to make way for the scissor lift, once in November and again after Christmas.

“It was mostly done in kind, with a little financial support,” Caitlin reports, and there was no uphill battle at all. The local RSL was supportive when asked if banners could be hung from the Memorial Hall to advertise the September exhibition and, when the mural was finished, Facebook recorded 500 likes and no dislikes.

It may sound like plain sailing, but there were still trials and tribulations in the creation of the mural, not least the occasional strong winds and the need for cousin Katherine to move up and down on the scissor lift, as painting on brick with deep mortar joints required constant checking from a distance.

Katherine, who was in the process of moving back from Alice Springs with her husband, found a window of opportunity to begin the work in September but could not complete it until she returned after Christmas, when temperatures soared.

First, she told me, she mapped out the basis of the painting using a technique favoured by street artists called squiggling, or doodling. This involved drawing nonsensical squiggles over the area where she intended the mural to be, then putting that “plan” into a computer and overlaying the intended artwork to show where different sections would be painted.

Although she had previously been involved in a public mural in Parramatta, this was the first time she had undertaken an outdoor mural of this scale and entirely on her own.

“I was the only one painting and I wondered if I’d ever get it finished,” she said. 

She had every colour she needed, using the Weathershield range she had worked with before in Parramatta. While the paint was water-soluble and easy to use, the height of the mural meant she was often running out of surfaces on which to mix colours.

Katherine knew her uncle Kim well and recalls a valuable piece of advice he once gave her when she showed him a painting of her young sister. The image was based on a photograph, but a hand in the picture looked awkward.

“Uncle Kim gave me a good lesson,” she said. “He told me the painting was good, but that you can use your imagination. You don’t have to put everything in it. He taught me that art is not just a camera.”

The Kim Nelson mural is now visible on the side of the Oddfellows Building, 67 Comur Street