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For Pol McMahon, making art is a compulsion, and Fitzroy is his muse.
The self-taught artist, better known as Pol the Painter, has lived in the inner-Melbourne suburb on and off for the past three decades, producing thousands of observational artworks detailing its architecture, ever-changing streets, nightlife, natural landscape, and locals.
When Pol first moved to Fitzroy in the late ‘80s, he was waiting tables at Mietta’s restaurant, and later working as a flight attendant, while living opposite Marios Cafe on Brunswick Street.
Marios is still going strong, however the same can’t be said for many of Fitzroy’s longstanding businesses and residents, who have been forced out as the suburb has gentrified.
For many years, Pol was one of them. By the late ‘90s, he was sleeping rough under bridges, or out-of-sight on artist residencies when working as an art teacher.
‘It wasn’t really legal for me to live there, but nonetheless, I was,’ says Pol.
‘It was hard going to always be semi-roughing it — hiding from the people that I was actually going to go out and be lecturing in a minute.
‘It was very, very difficult to be a teacher and homeless.’
During this period, Pol learned to salvage materials to create his art. Scrap metal and beer cans became the canvases, frames, and covers for his handmade sketchbooks.
Pol also invented his brush of choice during this time — a ballpoint pen with its ink tube removed — which functions as a metal carver on one end, and a paintbrush on the other, filled with a small selection of hairs pulled from more expensive paintbrushes.
This tool is not only economical, but convenient for Pol, who flips between both sides when creating his signature artworks on tin finished with acrylic paint.
Pol secured his current high-rise Fitzroy apartment in the Atherton Gardens public housing estate in 2013, allowing him to move back to the suburb he is so deeply inspired by.
He creates art without a concept — requiring no lofty description to be interpreted — something Pol is completely unapologetic about.
‘When I started painting out the front of Marios, my art school friends would say, “What’s your concept? You can’t just draw a picture of Marios and expect it to be good,” and I said, “Well, yes, I do, and I don’t expect your concept to be any good,”’ Pol says.
‘It’s just something in your head. It’s just a concept. It’s got no contact with the rest of the world unless you’re deliberately conceptualising that.’
Pol paints every day but getting your hands on an original isn’t straightforward. He explains, ‘I used to accept commissions all the time, but I’d be stuck in one place doing five of the Barbella [Hairdresser on Gertrude Street] for instance. And that’s okay — it’s nice to be recognised — but it gets really stale just doing the same thing.
‘I’m also really impatient with the formal setting. I can have an exhibition anytime I start talking to someone. If I open my book, I’ve got a hundred pictures to talk about, and it’s much more worthwhile than wandering around an empty room and the “art speak” that goes on with stuff. I have no patience with it.’
For these reasons, Pol prefers to choose his own subjects and exchange his works on tin for goods instead of money — whether that be a cigarette, a pint, or an artist residency.
He also gifts most of his watercolour works to those featured, who have usually watched the piece created before their eyes.
‘If I can possibly make sure the person who’s standing there gets it, I would much rather that,’ Pol says.
Perfectionism is another factor. Pol admits to abandoning many of his artworks — particularly those of buildings and people — when unable to capture their exact likeness.
He describes this process as an uncontrollable impulse rather than choice — a lifestyle he wouldn’t recommend.
‘It is maddening to be poor all the time. It is really maddening to be obsessed with a painting at the expense of my entire night’s sleep,’ Pol says.
Perhaps above all, Pol wants his art to be accessible. He takes pride in making the reproductions of his paintings on tin as appealing as the originals, achieved through inventive ways of distribution such as printing on ‘transparencies’ (overhead projector sheets).
‘It’s what the teachers used to use while I was at school,’ he says. ‘I thought to myself, you must be able to print on them so easily, and just as legibly as on paper, and no one else is doing it… I could do a hundred of them on two sheets, and therefore all my work can be in a tiny book.
‘Everything I do is meant to be super simple and demonstrate being clever.’
Pol’s goal is to eventually paint every single building in Fitzroy and self-publish them in a ‘Little Book of Fitzroy.’
Many of these buildings can be seen from his ‘million-dollar’ apartment view, which overlooks the suburb Pol began painting so intently over 30 years ago.
If you see Pol out the front of Marios, be sure to say hello.
