These paintings document parts of Melbourne's inner east: It's my everyday, that's the 'why'. Most scenes are from the daily walk to and from the studio. I worked from photographs taken en route between November 2010 and January 2011. Each work, I revisited the place pretty much daily, checking and understanding the details as necessary. The aim: to show those scenes exactly as they were at that moment of capture. I kept pretty strict faith with the 'what and where', so what you see is in close agreement with the facts on the day. Between those facts, however, my familiarity, my relationship to these places seeped in.

James Yuncken, July 2012

These days Gosch's Paddock is a training ground for elite sports. The view: half way along the path that cuts diagonally across; behind us, Collingwood's practice oval where the players can glimpse their Colosseum though the trees.

Bridge Road passed its peak as a retail strip before the GFC. These days 'SALE' and 'For Lease' signs are on the increase. The view: below Lennox St, eastwards. The new future here is large apartment buildings - note the scaffolding.

Melbourne's graffitied lanes attract tourists, local and international: subject of books. In Little Smith graffiti appear, often soon overwritten: fate of these, just off Gertrude St. The claws drip with paint in the great outdoor museum of the concrete jungle.

The view: three poles west of Punt, south side. This painting contains so much information about here and now, right there on its surface, that explanation seems like labouring the point. Decide for yourself.

This house, noted by some for its beautiful brickwork, is an oasis. Beauty, Tranquillity, Luxury, Peace: a fantasy of escape from the frantic rush around that most us feel of our lives are. Enough for me that it fulfils that fantasy.

My studio, above drab grey cement render and paling fences topped with barbed wire, is a hidden retreat, a place of peace and solitude where the quiet industry of collating all the noise takes place.

On Flinders Lane, above fortyfivedownstairs, Cumulus is one of very, very many reasons Melbourne is, thankfully, no longer the city of 1950's and '60's that I grew up in. Right now, and in here, we could be living in a Golden Age in this city's history.

Grey Street fountain, 1863: once had a job cleaning it. Beautiful? Well, not ugly: ok, maybe. 1968, survived demolition: popular support; understandable: Victorian; quaint. Do not demolish! Do not repeat. At the time, not running; water restrictions.

9. Queen - Smith St, afternoon of 26th January, 2011
Acrylic on board, 2012
73 x 112 cm