By Jeremy Cook
When staff members from a Condamine agribusiness spotted an ornate life-sized mural gracing the walls of an automotive shop in Pittsworth, they knew they needed something similar back home.
In June of this year, Allora-based artists Malcolm and Kerry Nicholson put the finishing touches on an almost five metre-tall piece of artwork on a corrugated iron shed at Condamine Seeds. It stands tall and proud as a tribute to the small but mighty outback town and the agricultural industry which so heavily dominates the surrounding region.
“A couple of the staff had seen the murals in Pittsworth that Kerry and Malcolm had done,” Condamine Seeds’ Erik Liljegren explained.
“We talked to our owner, Dave Gunther, and he approached myself, Kerry and Malcolm to do it,” he said.
The intent behind procuring the artwork, Mr Liljegren said, was mostly community-focused.
“It’s to give back to the community there [and] to really offer something right in the middle of town and there have been people that have called about it and stepped in,” he said.
“There’s been quite a few people taking pictures as they go on past and posting to social media.
“It’s just a nice little addition to the community.”
Battling the natural elements, the final product took the Nicholson brothers a little over a fortnight to complete despite rainy cold weather doing its best to complicate the painting process.
“The problem mainly was because of the time of year, it would have condensation on the wall until about 10 o’clock, so we couldn’t start early,” Malcolm Nicholson said.
A local business even loaned the brothers a cherry picker so they could get up and down the larger than life canvas quicker.
Despite the complications, they got it done. On stepping back and marvelling at the final product, Malcolm felt they’d “done something good”.
“And you want it to be good because you want the customer and the community to benefit from it,” he said.
“You want it to have longevity, you want it to last for them.
“That particular wall should have good longevity.”
And it could likely be the final ever major piece of art the brothers’ paint together.
“We’ve been in the business for 40 years and actually we’re retiring now,“ Malcolm said.
“So that may be the last job I actually do. Kerry’s going to continue on doing a few other jobs but I’ve got health issues.
“We’ll go back to where our starting point was where we doing smaller landscape paintings for galleries or something like that.“
If they do hang up the brushes, it will end an illustrious career which has spawned murals all over rural Queensland, including in the Southern Downs.
Mr Liljegren described what could be their final mural as “amazing”.
“I didn’t expect it to be that lifelike looking,” he said.
“It’s fantastic.”
