Gregorian chants play softly and a curl of incense drifts high into the air at Garry Shead's studio in Bundeena on the coast of the Royal National Park.
For almost five months, Shead, one of Australia's best-known figurative painters, has been grappling with a new series based on Dante Alighieri's poem, The Divine Comedy. Invoking the spirit of the 700-year-old poet has been "terribly difficult". He grimaces as he recalls stepping up to the blank canvas every morning, regardless of whether he felt like it or not.
"When I first started, it was horrifying. Trying to illustrate a literary masterpiece like that was almost unimaginable," he says. "I was a mess. I had to work through grief, anger, fear. It was such a struggle. I just had to keep working and praying."
Around him lies evidence of the battle. A sketch of Dante by Renaissance painter Raphael is pinned to the wall. Among the paints, brushes and bottles of turpentine lie several translations of the book, all of them open, each with passages underlined in lead pencil.
Finally, with the help of what Shead calls one of his "gurus", a clairvoyant in Seattle he consults on the phone, he has emerged, like Dante, out of a dark wood. Shead's diary of Saturday, July 27, reads: "At last I feel like I am conversing with Dante. As I read, it is his voice that I hear."
The results of that communion – 21 paintings showing the poet's pilgrimage through hell, purgatory and heaven, guided by Beatrice and the poet Virgil – pulse with energy as they lean against the studio walls.
One of the most startling works shows Dante and Virgil heading towards the gates of hell; not on the River Styx, but rather, Sydney Harbour, the mouth of Luna Park the blazing inferno. It is in memory of the late artist Martin Sharp; the two friends were working at the amusement park the day before the ghost train ride caught fire in 1979, killing six children and one adult. The tragedy had a profound effect on them both.
At 72, Shead is lean, gentle and quick to laugh at himself. He walks out to his sunny courtyard overlooking Port Hacking, feeds a cockatoo a corner of toast, and watches a wooden ferry chug towards the nearby wharf. He left Kings Cross and moved to Bundeena 20 years ago with his late wife, Judit, a sculptor.
Like many other artists and writers they were "driven out by poverty". They rented a cottage and studio amongst the angophora trees, currawongs and lorikeets. They had a daughter, Lilla, now 26, who lives next door. (Gria, his other daughter from a previous marriage, lives in Bathurst.) In the space and sunshine, Shead hit his stride and found the subject matter that would change his life; a series based on the book Kangaroo by D.H. Lawrence.
The floating, Chagall-like figures of Lawrence and his wife Frieda mythologised the south coast and made his name. Those paintings command six figures each.
Adjusting his owl-framed glasses, as a pot of Earl Grey tea steeps, Shead says he has wanted to paint this Dante series since a visit to Liguria in Italy seven years ago. There he saw, with a jolt, the desk where the poet wrote.
Clive James's much-lauded interpretation of The Divine Comedy last year "re-lit the flame". Six months ago, his mentor, art historian Sasha Grishin said to him, "You can do this. You're ready."
The epic poem seemed impenetrable at first, but, says Shead, "after a while you can just feel it, you can understand it. It's not a mystery any more.
"It's so contemporary. He's telling you about people that could be your friends today. A lot of it is really about love ... But you can only do this at a certain age. It's the sort of thing you paint later in life."
Shead lost Judit to pancreatic cancer seven years ago. His clairvoyant helped him with the "worst of it", he says. He sometimes feels her presence in his airy, four-pavilion home. "A book will open on a particular page she wants me to see, or a butterfly will hover for a long time over a plant she loved in the garden," he says quietly. "But at some stage, you've just got to deal with it."
Two years after she passed away, romance kindled with Rose, a jazz musician who had taught Lilla the piano and whom both he and Judit had known for more than two decades. They have been together ever since. He shows me a copy of Dante's earlier book, La Vita Nuova, or "New Life". "That's what it's about now," he says.
Rose bustles about in the kitchen and recalls how, playing the piano at local art gatherings, "everyone else would be talking, but Garry would just stand there at the end of the piano, listening."
"A lot of women love Garry" says Rose. "They love his sensitivity, they love his paintings. He's a Cancer; he has got that sweetness, that creative, soulful character."
Many of his figures are ethereal; angels hover, Christ stands knee deep at the beach, faces are upturned in beatific light. "Angels are real and there are lots of them," he says, matter-of-factly. He remains open and receptive to the spiritual world through his meditation, he says.
Every morning, even in winter, he walks to a nearby beach and plunges into the ocean, then meditates on the sand or in his studio. It sets him on the right course for the day, he says. "One thing I've learnt is that all the help you ever need is there. It's a matter of asking.
"It has taken me a long time to get here, but now, when I'm painting well, it just feels so natural, there's no longer any ego. It's heaven. It lasts quite a long while. It's blissful. There's no effort, you're just flowing. It makes me feel like this is what I was put here to do."
Garry's Shead's The Antipodean Divine Comedy is at Australian Galleries from September 17 to October 5.
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