The bug-eyed and shaggy emus looking out from the colourful acrylic paintings are as bemused about the world around them as their creator.
But the artist – former Caloundra City councillor Andrew Champion – and his comical flightless characters, have learnt to play the role of silent observer, taking in the big picture with perhaps just a shake of the head before moving on.
With his first paintings for sale in a local art gallery and others gracing walls from Noosa to Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh, Andrew and his signature emus have found their happy place.
And the stress of trying to fix things and deal with inflated egos is now someone else’s job.
The curly-haired Bohemian type who saunters around the easel and partly completed works in the Second Avenue garage art studio in Caloundra bears little resemblance to the suit-and-tie former Kawana representative with a haircut more akin to his Royal Military College Duntroon days.
Back then, he was a boy in a hurry to change the world for the better.
As a 24-year-old, Andrew was the youngest person in Queensland to serve in local government when he was elected to the then Landsborough Shire Council in 1985.
He paved the way for others such as Maroochy Shire-turned Sunshine Coast councillor Christian Dickson.
“I broke the ground for young people,” says Andrew, who joined John McCaw as the first two representatives of the then fledgling Kawana Waters community.
“The average age (at the time in the council) is what I am now: 62.”
While far from being a radical, Andrew felt hamstrung in getting things done for his division as quickly as he would have liked.
Having established a building consultancy business in 1982, living in the Champion Homes display house on the Nicklin Way at Wurtulla, he had a long list of ideas to bolster business – among them, a police station, high school and hospital, more commercial enterprise to bring jobs to the area … even a golf course (his one unfulfilled project, so far).
Maybe it was because he was seen as a mere whippersnapper who needed to know his place and pay his dues before he could garner full support.
Perhaps he was too vocal against the gently, gently approach of “this is how it’s always been done” in favour of asking those at the coalface: “Why not?”.
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Or he could have been just a little too ahead of his time.
Whatever the reasons, during two stretches of nine and 11 years in the council chambers, including a failed attempt in between to ascend to the top job of mayor (“A better man beat me: Des Dwyer”), Andrew admits he was in a constant “fight or flight” mode.
The former elite athlete and surf lifesaver didn’t realise that to cope with the stress of the job, his body was producing seriously high levels of adrenalin on a daily basis, eating away at his insides, over those 20 years of service.
While he tried to hide increasing symptoms, his health eventually paid the price – starting with ulcerative colitis and moving on to the more life-threatening perforated bowel and the onset of septicemia.
Surgeons were forced to remove parts of his large intestine and bowel.
He has now developed Crohn’s disease – a chronic inflammation of the digestive tract – and been left with a legacy of ailments requiring paracetamol and biological drugs.
“Being on the council on the Sunshine Coast, I was a bit like a duck out of water. It wasn’t really me,” the married father of two and grandfather of three confesses.
“I would have been probably better being a councillor down in Albury.
“But I guess when my brother (David) drowned, we moved up here so everyone wouldn’t feel sorry for us.
“I was 14 and he was 16 (when he drowned).
“Our family had a big auto electrical business in Albury.
“We were like the Kennys (Hayden and Grant) down there. Everybody knew the Champions and we had big contracts with the army. We had 10 or 12 auto electricians in the workshop.
“I used to go down there and help stack batteries on trucks when I was a kid after school and weekends and sweep the floor. I had that work ethic from a very young age.”
Andrew isn’t one for sour grapes or feeling sorry for himself. But he still enjoys being controversial.
His Tour Caloundra videos on YouTube sees him riding his electric bike, pointing out where the council could do more to fix pathways and potholes, roadworks and rubbish.
And he has been known to highlight issues such as climate change in his paintings, including one where a surf lifesaving patrol protects a flock of his beloved emus as the usually dry desert surrounding Uluru is flooded.
Art has been Andrew’s lifelong joy, starting with childhood drawings of the family’s pet cat, continuing during breaks from his council work and picking up momentum in more recent times in sketching homes and landscaping in project management.
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Now it’s also therapeutic but he sees the potential for a decent income one day.
Andrew has already sold pieces worth hundreds of dollars to friends and associates, and tapped into the Redbubble website that puts artworks on products such as T-shirts and coffee cups.
He even pictures himself as a cartoonist in future, able to combine creativity with his political mind.
“My sketching is probably a lot better than my painting because painting is slow,” he says while adding backstories to works large and small around him.
“And one of the things I want to actually start doing is getting into caricatures.
“There’s so many things I can do as a satirist or cartoonist about (former prime minister Scott) Morrison and (current PM Anthony) Albanese, and I could comment on all the political stuff in Queensland with “Paddle Duck” (Annastacia Palaszczuk) and so many things on Sunshine Coast Council.
“I painted Pauline Hanson as an emu for my little brother Mac for Christmas.
“He once took a selfie with Pauline and somebody took a photo from the UK Daily Mail and it went worldwide.
“So, I did a painting of all these emus in front of the Birdsville Pub and she’s the orange one.”
With a Sixties music mix blaring on his iPhone, Andrew has been able to dedicate himself to his art full time over the past 12 months.
And those endearing emus keep sticking their necks out to help him – whether holding umbrellas in a wet desert, walking down an endless road after a big weekend at the Birdsville Races or wondering why anyone would want to “own” the rights to the world’s largest monolith instead of simply enjoying its majesty.
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He proudly shows visitors his first emu sketch from 1989. Even then, the sparks of humour are evident in an up-close view of a face only a mother could love.
“Emus are an ugly bird and they’re crazy,” Andrew says.
“So I thought, ‘I’m not going to paint an ugly, crazy bird. No one’s going to buy it. I’ve got to make them look funny and get them doing something’.”
Andrew’s art also gives a nod to artist Ken Maynard, whose outback Ettamogah Pub cartoons appeared regularly in Australasian Post from 1958.
Look closely at his “Captain Cook” – a view of the Glass House Mountains from the ocean, aboard the Endeavour – and you’ll see rabbits hiding behind boxes and ropes and a cockatoo sitting on the crossbeam.
Other works reflect his fascination for Ned Kelly, boyhood adventures around his family home, camping holidays and the scouting life in the great outdoors from age seven to the status of Queen’s Scout.
“It’s the most wonderful place to grow up,” Andrew says of his Albury days.
“We had like a boys-own adventure on the Murray River. We used to paddle down in dad’s boat – just three mates.
“He’d drop us off just below the Hume Weir and we’d float down like Huckleberry Finn for three days, two nights, camping on the riverbank.
“We’d have food with us and we’d fish and set up a campfire.
“We had holidays at Bermagui, and down the Mornington Peninsula. We used to dig holes and tunnels under the boats laying on the beach at Rye.
“It was just the most wonderful childhood. There’s so many stories to tell.”
Andrew now has a new “to-do list”: writing a series of children’s books embracing all those memories.
It’s been a long journey but that impish grin has returned.
“As an artist we express what we see and what we feel from our heart and our emotions and our history.
“I’m so happy now. It’s stress-free but I’m productive.
“I can do what I want, whereas before I had to put a round peg in a round hole. I had to comply with all the legal requirements of process.
“With art, I’m not painting with my hands tied together.”
- Andrew’s paintings are for sale at Talented Friends by Laura gallery and art space at Shop 4, 8 Ormuz Avenue, Village Walkway, Caloundra, or see other works at chamsart.redbubble.com
