Thongs and boardshorts are quite normal attire for Wollongong's Paul Ryan to wear to work.
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The Thirroul, south of Sydney, local usually starts the day with a surf before dropping his daughter to school, then onto the office - his purpose-built art studio.
The room is filled with surfboards, paints, artworks (some still wet) and a few other bits and pieces, but it seems quite orderly.
Ryan's name might seem familiar having regularly appeared as a finalist in the Archibald, Sulman and Wynne prizes for several decades.
He also credits himself as being the guy who taught comedian Anh Do to paint.
"I can't teach any more after Anh, he was paying me $3000 a day, that's now my fee," Ryan laughed.
"He was an art student before he was a law student and he wanted to go back and learn to paint. He discovered that I lived in the area [so approached me]."
Having an art teacher who is one of the Illawarra's top-selling painters is not a bad feat.
Ryan is represented by galleries in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne and said despite the COVID-19 pandemic, this year he's been solidly working.
It's not easy to get into, but that's okay there's a lot of good talent out there, and everyone else deserves a turn.
"People are buying a lot of art, because they aren't travelling," he said.
"People are nesting they're doing their houses up, they're spending time at home and they're spending their money ... on making their places nice and buying artworks. So it's been very good for visual arts in Australia."
His smaller paintings - like those on ping-pong paddles - you could pick up for less than $1000. At the other end of the scale a double landscape was sold last year to a Melbourne restaurant for $50,000.
At least that makes up for the $30,000 yearly paint bill. Some of the tubes Ryan works with cost between $125 to $600.
However, it's the "quality of the pigment", the "vibrancy" of the colours, that the creative can't live without.
At the time of my visit, he was working on another colonial-inspired piece (which he's most known for), with a young Captain Cook in blue uniform standing in front of the Illawarra coast.
"I like playing with that interesting notion that here these guys are thinking they are civilized and the natives are savages, but in reality I think the tables were turned," Ryan said.
In recent times portraits - like that of Nick Cave or the Beastie Boys - have also brought the Thirroul resident popularity.
The latter piquing the judges interest in this year's Sulman Prize, titled "Three imaginary boys" - but have a remarkable resemblance to the "Sabotage" hit makers.
There's even a ginormous portrait of Manly Sea Eagles tragic Tom Keneally, face-down against the wall of the studio. This was his 2020 entry to the Archibald but didn't quite make it past the judges.
"It's not easy to get into, but that's okay there's a lot of good talent out there, and everyone else deserves a turn," Ryan laughed.
READ MORE:
Turning a canvas paint down is usually a signal the artist is not happy with the finished product - but that's not the end of the canvas.
Another work may go over the top, or Ryan may alter or tweak until it's up to his standard.
"It's a little easier to sell a big painting if it's been in the Archibald," he said in the case of the Keneally feature. "A canvas can always get reused ... it's always salvageable."
Last year the artist raised eyebrows for leaving a bunch of old works on the kerb for free, though with Banksy-style additions.
"Those were ones that kind of not worked and I'd turned against the wall, but I decided I couldn't be bothered trying to fix them," Ryan said.
"I took some spray paint to them and defaced them a little bit and then put them out there and people took them, so everyone's happy."
Compared to other artists I've interviewed over the years, Ryan works relatively quickly.
He could produce up to 10 small 20cm by 30cm paintings in a week, and perhaps two in a week for large paintings - depending on the "success" rate"
"People say it's quick but it's 30 years of experience, all those years of working, it's all the failures as well as the successes," he said.
All in all, the northern Illawarra artist has had a pretty awesome career, knowing from a young age he was destined for a pallet knife.
"In many ways I always knew that's probably what I'd do because I couldn't envisage myself doing anything else," Ryan said. "I just think i'm a very lucky person, I get to come up to my studio and play with paint every day."