A Stroke of Genius

This article is from the September 2020 Horse Deals magazine.

Hello, Peter Mortimore speaking,” I hear crackle across the line, over the humming and beeping of a cherry picker. It’s a strange concept, picturing your interviewee some 19 metres high on the side of a silo in Dunedoo, NSW. Such an image has become everyday life for Dorrigo-based artist Peter Mortimore. For the last seven weeks, he’s spent the majority of his day manoeuvering around a silo, paintbrush in hand, with the ever-important task of immortalising racing royalty. The rural service town of Dunedoo has a population of 800 and is a five-hour drive northwest from Sydney. It is here where champion jockey Hugh Bowman was born and raised — a frequent participant at local competitions and pony club. And now, where he is being painted by Peter Mortimore large-scale, alongside Winx and leading Thoroughbred trainer Chris Waller.

For Peter, drawing had always been a main interest and growing up riding, and being mad about horses, made his equine counterparts the perfect subject to hone his skills. “I finished my schooling at Scott’s College, Sydney, and took 12 months off to mature… but that never actually happened,” jokes Peter. “I ended up working for Elders as a stock auctioneer and branch manager. After that, I decided I wanted to paint. I embarked on a painting career at 37 years of age and that’s been life ever since. Previously, I had never really thought of art as a career, I never thought I’d make a living from it.

“Art is not an easy thing. It’s something you have to stick to and each artist takes a different track. I started exhibiting, painting for competitions, and then I was asked to do a commission for the McDonalds at Dubbo. That really prompted me to take on art full-time. From there, I was asked to be the guest artist at the Calgary Stampede in Canada, and hey, here we are years later.” On the side of a silo.

The planning for the piece started out like any other for Peter; an A4 drawing. How do you turn an A4 drawing into a 19-metre piece around a cylindrical surface? “The main thing was getting the scale right,” Peter continues. “I ended up doing a grid of dots, one metre apart, and then drew it off of that, but you can still get it wrong. I’d come down off the silo and see I’d done something one square down or one square too short, so back up I’d go to fix it.

“With Winx being such a recognisable horse, I’ve got to get her right. Hughie is such a delightful bloke and he’s been a great help — he actually called in a moment ago and he loves it. He’s been helping me out with Winx’s colour. She’s a dark bay but she throws a lot of red in her coat. The basics of her colour are there now and the lightening up and highlights of her rump, shoulder and face are still to come.”

And that’s where the magic happens, hey? “Yeah, it is, right at the end. It won’t worry me if I have to go up and down the cherry picker 50 times to check to make sure that’s right.”

Surely this artist doesn’t have to go up and down the cherry picker every time he wants to look at his work as a whole. “My wife Carolyn is my ground crew,” Peter says. “She reminds me to attach the safety lanyard, sends me photos of the whole silo for me to look at or will point out anything that’s not looking too flash — and she’s always right. Sometimes if I throw a tantrum and I’ve made a real mess of it I will come down and have a look for myself.”

Peter’s main concern now is the detail, but challenges have been aplenty. “I was petrified of heights before I started and I had to go and get my elevated working platform licence to drive the cherry picker,” Peter explains. “We also had two weeks of pretty ordinary weather. I obviously can’t paint in the rain, and if the wind picks up I just can’t be up here.

“The curvature is another difference that I’ve had to adjust to. Photographs don’t do the piece justice. As Hugh commented to me, you just can’t see the silo properly from a photograph, you need to be there and walk around it. The size of it is huge which is why manoeuvering around on the cherry picker has taken up so much time; you have to turn the machine off, paint in that area, move down, turn it off, get all your tools together again, and so on. I opted to use Haymes Paints and brushes instead of spray cans too, which is a slower process, but it should pass the test of time.”

“I’ve got two other sides to paint on the silo. They are mainly landscapes and other images relevant to Dunedoo and they won’t take me as long as this side. This is the main view when you pull into the truck stop, which is why I really want to make sure it’s right.

From my calculations, Peter has spent upwards of 200 hours painting this silo so far, including painting more than 35,000 blades of grass in one day. Peter thinks this may be his first and last silo painting though. “Six towns have asked me to paint their silos and different works, but I think this will be it for me,” Peter concludes.

On completion of the silo painting, Dunedoo is having an official launch party with Peter and Hugh in attendance. After which, Peter will be looking forward to travelling back to home base, where he and wife Carolyn breed coloured Thoroughbred crosses. They already have a few palomino foals on the ground and take delight in watching them grow and develop.

Peter is a true horse admirer and incredible artistic talent, and if you are ever near Dunedoo, I encourage you to visit this piece in person. Who knows, you might even spot Peter dangling silo-side.

Article: Rachel Clayfield

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