A FIVE-YEAR labour of love for Bathurst artist Graham Lupp is coming to an end.
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Mr Lupp has been researching and writing a book on the architectural history of Bathurst and has now delivered the final draft to his printers in Hong Kong.
The lifelong Bathurst resident had initially hoped to complete the project in time for the city’s bicentenary year in 2015 but soon found that deadline was too ambitious.
“In January 2013 I started writing an architectural history of the building of Bathurst in its first century 1815-1915, and of the people responsible for its development,” Mr Lupp said.
“I wanted to write a major art book using original building plans and historical photographs, and supplement these with my own photographs, paintings and measured drawings.
“To commit myself to this project full-time, which I ambitiously hoped to finish by the end of the 2015 Bathurst bicentenary year, I was fortunate to gain private sponsors and a partnership with Bathurst Regional Council for the book to be an official bicentenary project.”
His commitment to the project meant the award-winning artist has not done a single painting for five years while he has been working on the book.
“The time overrun was largely because I found a huge amount of extra material that I had not foreseen,” Mr Lupp said.
“I discovered that many of the 70 architects and builders featured in the book were responsible for building much of the Central West, as well as Bathurst. I felt that I could not do justice to their legacy without also including these buildings as well.”
Mr Lupp recruited former Charles Sturt University graphic designer Tony O’Neill to design the book and former Bathurst High School deputy principal John Payne as the copy editor.
Building Bathurst, the story of the people who built Bathurst and Central New South Wales is more than 800 pages long and includes more than 1000 illustrations. The 1500 limited-edition copies are due for release in 2018.
Mr Lupp now plans to get back to his oils and is planning an exhibition of new paintings of some of the local buildings featured in the book.
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