Bell, a successful and popular artist, has drawn and painted the beach more times than he can remember. In the explanatory note adjacent his latest artistic version of the beach, which hangs in Newcastle Art Gallery as a finalist in the Kilgour Art Prize, Bell says it is the last time he is going to paint the subject.

The piece in the Newcastle gallery has already been sold, to a buyer who wishes to remain anonymous. Bell has two more paintings of the beach in a new show which opened this week, Dogs in ART, at Gallery 139 in Hamilton.

“There’s a really great old saying I like – ‘We’ve got so many beaches in Newcastle we gave one to the dogs,’” he says with a smile over coffee at Bank Corner Cafe. “I love the Dog Beach. For a painting it gives me lots of things to work with. Different ways of painting skies, different ways of painting water. Different ways of painting dogs.”

Bell also has a genuine love of dogs, as evidenced by the many works he has done with the animals – not to mention goats, one of his other famous subjects (original artworks of his goat images hang in the Mambo show currently upstairs in the Newcastle Art Gallery). 

He frequents Dog Beach with his poodle, Larry, who likes a run with other dogs and a bit of stick or ball chasing. He also walks Larry daily at Lambton Park close to his home, where he and his wife, artist Claire Martin, have their studios.

But it was Chico, another poodle that Bell owned that has since died, that got him going to Dog Beach nearly two decades ago.

“He was obsessed with Dog Beach,” Bell says. “Coming down from Nobbys, past the Sea Scouts hall, he would go off. He would like meeting the other dogs as well, the interaction, racing in a gang, running up and down barking. It’s another reason I like it, the chaos.”

It was a moment walking along the Nobbys breakwater that struck his artistic senses. “It was on sunset and I looked down and could see it in full bore, the frantic energy,’’ he says. “Somehow it clicked right away, almost like an epiphany I guess. 

“I didn’t know it would go for so long.”

Like so many Novocastrians, Bell and his wife often take in the beach when they are showing visitors around. “They can’t believe what a luxury we have,” he says. “With liners and ships, it’s a visually incredible place.”

With the Dog Beach in his rear view mirror as a subject, Bell has plenty of other projects in front of him. Next month he and Martin’s works will feature alongside works from James Drinkwater and Lottie Consalvo at Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery as part of the gallery’s Paris/Hunter show  in conjunction with the touring Impressions of Paris: Lautrec, Degas and Daumier show.

Bell has another show in February, at Megalo gallery in Canberra, where collaborative woodcut prints he made with German artist Menno Fahl will be exhibited. Some of the works were previously shown at Maitland Regional Art Gallery in 2015.

Bell was represented at the Hughes Gallery in Sydney for 22 years, until the gallery closed in December due to the ill health of longtime art dealer and owner Ray Hughes.

Bell’s Dog Beach paintings are owned far and wide, from Norway to Manning Regional Art Gallery to Lake Macquarie and private owners from Dungog to Newcastle and Sydney. The works are often three-metres wide, with an acrylic undercoat in pink or orange, and final work in oil.

Some focus on the dogs, some on the people, or the sticks. The sky and water reflect different moods and weather, time of day. The people and dogs aren’t identifiable, although people don’t hesitate to imagine themselves in the work. Bell has painted himself and Larry into at least one of the Dog Beach works (Dog Beach, Sunset Newcastle, shown at Lake Macquarie City gallery in 2006.)

While it’s goodbye Dog Beach for now, Bell’s already saying he might do a John Farnham and paint it again in 10 years.