The Canberra Hotel, 1927

This watercolor brings back the former Canberra Hotel, once known as "the city hotel for country people," standing tall in Brisbane from 1927 until its demolition in 1987. A bold maroon and cream palette gives the towering seven storey building, later expanded to ten, its commanding presence, the brushwork tracing each row of windows and the hotel's own signage down its face. Vintage cars wait at the curb below, small and patient against the building's scale, while a heavy, brooding sky presses down from above. More than eight million guests once passed through these doors. The building is gone now, but the painting holds its place a little longer.