1st Fleet, 1788, Sydney Cove. With Owen Cavanaugh, Margaret Burgess, Beryl Buckton, and Captain Phillip.

WORK IN PROGRESS
Since my last post I have moved house again,  while settling in I began this piece, it has occupied me for most of the time I have been here, on and off, in fact I have three projects underway, with a new home and community I have new artistic aspirations. At the beginning of the year, before I had moved house, I created a series of studies for large serious paintings down the track, of seascapes.
I had never considered myself a landscape/seascape painter up till recently, though I had attempted a seascape of the 1st Fleet some years prior.
Here is one half of my progress so far, without any knowledge of ship painting, I stumbled along and eventually made an original version of the fleet, today filling the longboat with family members, along with Phillip.. My  5x Great Grandfather  Owen Cavanaugh ( able seaman ) and my 5 x Great Grandmother Margaret Dowling ( convict ) were among those on the 1st Fleet, it is to them I have dedicated this painting. According to historic accounts Owen was the first European of the new settlement to set foot on shore.
In the longboat I included my sister Margaret in memory of her passing three weeks ago, my mother who died back in 2002, it is her lineage  that connects us to the first fleet.
And there they sit, a whimsical grouping depicting a real event, without  being factual, I created an imaginary scene, a comical rendition, dedicated to my sister Margaret... 
Oil on canvas.
Not a very good photo, but as it is only a progress shot, I will take a better one  including the whole painting, it is in fact much darker that this image, the intensity of the sky lost.