Peter Bell is something of a 21st century swaggie.
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On a any given day, the weather finally eking out something resembling spring, Peter can be found in one of his favourite haunts – under the new Echuca-Moama bridge.
Where his travelling art show – his van cum home and trailer of wares – was pulled up for the day, his paintings propped up against both.
But from his riverside base he wasn’t fishing for Murray cod, he was hoping to catch a buyer or two for his landscapes.
Peter – or Pete the painter as he has become known – isn’t homeless simply because he doesn’t have a bricks and mortar address.
He has found exactly the place he has always been looking for, and it’s called peace and quiet in the country.
Even big trucks and heavy traffic rumbling over the bridge cannot penetrate Peter’s solitude at ground level.
“I’m originally from Mordialloc and Noble Park in Melbourne, but moved north around 1988,” he says.
“After five years around Bendigo I kept going north until I got here, and these days I don’t stray very far. Sometimes I go down around Castlemaine and occasionally to Phillip Island or 90 Mile Beach, but that’s only ever for a few days before I head home.”
A plasterer by trade originally, who also turned his hand to rendering and house painting, Peter’s only artistic training has been through the school of life.
He reckons he has been learning it since he was 12 and has never stopped.
But most of all, like any swaggie worth his salt, Peter’s not interested in his passion becoming anything even remotely resembling a business.
Because when it does, he explains, you are not working for yourself, doing what you love, you’re working for the person who commissioned a painting.
“They might be patient, it might even take a year to do, but it is there in the back of your mind all the time, someone else is setting your schedule and I’m not interested in anything like that,” he says.
“I paint landscapes because I love nature, just look around here, the river, the birds, all of it, it’s beautiful.
“Yes, I know paddlesteamers sell, but they are a pain in the butt. I love landscapes, that’s where I can express myself, and my art.”
Although Peter’s never had a formal lesson, he does recall his nascent days when he started doing pencil copies of black and white pictures in the daily newspapers, before moving onto ink, which he loved using but didn’t suit his temperament because of its different demands and time and detail.
Oils would become Peter’s thing, although major advances in acrylics are starting to get his attention.
“The only problem with oils is drying time, so a painting I do today, it could be days or more before it has set and as I always paint outdoors, people see me doing things and want to take them on the day doesn’t work,” he says.
“But they have made amazing advances with acrylics in the past 30 years.”
While business has been a bit slow with the changing seasons, Peter sells on a pretty regular basis, with a lot of his work selling anywhere between $150 and $200 up to $600 – with some going over $1000 from time to time.
And he’s not too fussed how regularly they sell; they are a good top up on his pension from time to time.
When brush comes to canvas, all Peter wants to do is paint.
He has been known to mull over ideas and suddenly get up in the middle of the night, crank up the generator for a bit of light and get to work.
But even being a wandering soul does not make Peter immune to the cost of living.
He says frames have become so expensive they are pretty well out of his reach – so like a good bushie he now makes his own.
“It reached a point where the frames cost more than the paintings so I just scrounge for wood, it’s amazing how much is thrown away, or put aside to be burnt – old pallets, redgum, fence palings, you can use them all, and if I’m not painting I am probably making frames.”
Or just sitting back in his chair, looking around, and thinking “how’s the serenity”?