Artist chalks up a win

Chalk is cheap but it has proved a nice little earner for Wollongong artist Simon Thomas, who won $5000 after being named the 2008 Champion Pavement Artist on Sunday.Thomas was one of 35 artists who took part in the 4th annual Chalk Urban Art Festival at Sydney's Darling Harbour.They were given four days to complete their chalk-on-pavement masterpieces, but were hampered by wet weather - rain being the natural enemy of chalk. "You need four days to create a work of that size with a lot of detail, but because of the bad weather we only had a few hours on Thursday and Sunday - so everyone had to heavily modify their designs and it was really hard yakka to get it done," said Thomas."I did a dragon in an anamorphic perspective, which means that when you look at it from a certain angle, it looks like it is sitting on the concrete, rather than flat on the concrete: it's a three-dimensional thing." Thomas is well known in chalk art, doing backdrops for television programs such as MTV and Hi-5 and creating signage, menu boards and murals through his company, Chalk Talk. Last year he won the festival's award for best contemporary work. "Chalk is a traditional medium that originated in Europe," Thomas said."The paupers would draw on the concrete outside churches in the hope that people would give them pennies so they could buy food for the day."Thomas may be familiar as the mystery artist behind a series of paintings which were left on park benches at Wollongong Civic Plaza over a period of two months last year.