 View of the field from sitting in the gods. (Smartphone) | Vincent Cavanagh © 2026 On Sunday (7 June 2026), I experienced my first ever AFL game with a group of friends at the SCG (Sydney Cricket Ground). Not that I really understood any of it, to be honest. But I will say that seeing it in real life is far superior to watching it all flattened out on a giant flatscreen TV. As for the match itself, well, that was hardly the (ahem) introduction I was expecting. St Kilda trouncing Sydney Swans in the first quarter and it then taking the Swans the whole of the match up until the very end of the last quarter to finally get out in front on the leaderboard. Calling it tense would be an understatement. Not that I had any “skin” in the game, mind you. I have never followed any team or sporting code in my life, and I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon. Also, the ferocious passion of multiple stands full of grieved Swans supporters making known their disagreement with referee decisions over player actions is not something I would ever want to be one the receiving end of.  A clouded dawn over Nobbys Head. (Nikon D5300) | Vincent Cavanagh © 2026 And then on Wednesday (10 June 2026), I got up at 4:00 AM to catch the train to Newcastle to photograph the sunrise around both the foreshore of the Hunter River and Nobbys Beach with my old DSLR. I’m amazed that I actually did it. The kernel of the idea for doing it got stuck in my head sometime last year and I would have preferred to have done it earlier in 2026 when we were still in the summer months here down under, but that was a stretch too far for me in that prior moment for varying reasons.  Port of Newcastle Pilot heading out to meet the bulk carrier in the Hunter River. (Nikon D5300) | Vincent Cavanagh © 2026 The main reason I had for taking my DSLR—apart from better dynamic range than a smartphone—was an intention to give it a ‘one last hurrah’ before parting ways with it. Something that I am still no closer to doing after taking it out with me on Wednesday, which my shooting wrist was haranguing me over continuously the following day with accompanying pains and twinges. Most of my focus that day ended up being funnelled into making most of the morning’s golden hour light and pushing myself to try and beat a bulk carrier on its way out to sea before it reached Nobbys Head, which of course I did not accomplish. I am not Superman. Nor was I set up for jogging and, believe me, those bulk carriers can move!  What I did catch was carrier's stern before it passed behind Nobbys Head. (Nikon D5300) | Vincent Cavanagh © 2026 I think I haven’t exerted myself so much since WYD Lisbon, and after what I put myself through on Wednesday I could not in good conscience kid myself into thinking I could do a World Youth Day again. My spring doesn’t spring back like it did 3 years ago and I don’t think it likely that I’d have anyone with me to call me out pull me back from the brink of burning out.
WYD is a youngster’s game and I’m not that young anymore. Or should that be: foolish anymore? Vincent Cavanagh 14 June 2026 Artwork created 26 May 2026.  ‘Single Male Catholic: Unspoken Hi’ ~ Vincent Cavanagh © 2026 I have nothing more to add.
Vincent Cavanagh 26 May 2026 Artwork created 21–22 May 2026.  ‘Single Male Catholic: Youth Event Disappointments’ ~ Vincent Cavanagh © 2026 Truly, why do we as Catholics go out of our way to prevent (non-professional) young adults from meeting others like them?
“Yes, welcome to the Faith, but don't ever fraternise with anyone else but God while you're here. Thank you ever so much.” 💀 Vincent Cavanagh 22 May 2026 Artwork created 15, 17 May 2026.
Created 12 May 2026.  ‘Mark 4:26–29 (illustration)’ ~ Vincent Cavanagh © 2026 Finally illustrated an image that came to me when I was reading through the beginning of Mark's Gospel* in the past month or more. (*New Revised Standard Version: Catholic Edition.)
It has been quite a while since I last illustrated a verse from the bible. Vincent Cavanagh 12 May 2026 Created 8 May 2026.  ‘Single Male At Church’ ~ Vincent Cavanagh © 2026 ...that some of us feel more than others.
Vincent Cavanagh 9 May 2026
“Rakuran. Rakuran san-sei.”
Portraits of some friends in the style of a known Japanese cartoon that I’m never likely to watch beyond random clips of it online. Why did I do it? Because it was a goofy idea that sparked joy in me, and I wanted to make it happen. Vincent Cavanagh 21 April 2026
A silly, non sequitur cartoon about Bishop Stumbers subbing in for an Amblin Entertainment employee based on a friend's birthday visit to Madame Tussauds in Sydney last month.
It took me a lot of tries to end up with the final felt-pen inkwork yesterday followed by spending the night adding the colour digitally on the computer. Then I gave it a few final, finishing tweaks this morning. Vincent Cavanagh 9 April 2026  15 March 2026 sketchbook (detail) ~ Vincent Cavanagh © 2026 First-quarter Blog Digest for 2026. What’s been happening. Website-wise, there are now ‘next-post, last-post’ buttons at the bottom of each World Youth Day Lisbon blog post for ease of navigation through that series. It just took a lot of time, repetition, and wrangling with the Weebly website editor to get it done. Hooray!  Current versus possible future CavanaghArt logo mascots ~ Vincent Cavanagh © 2026. Art-wise, I did have a day spent doodling out ideas for Bishop Stumbers cartoons, which was a positive. Most of them were about what said bishop might get involved in on a WYD pilgrimage. We shall see if some of them might get developed beyond their initial ballpoint drafts. Rattling about my brain at the moment is a possibility of re-drawing the CavanaghArt bird logos to better reflect my current style of art. The original set of birdies are well and truly about a decade old at this point, in 2026, and I’m certainly not the same artist I was back then. Whether anything actually happens on this idea, or it just keep rattling around my head, is another matter. Also, after the suggestion of a friend, I have been down the rabbit hole of investigating what it would take to self-produce stickers from my art and my conclusion was that, for me, it would be far more effort than it was worth. The shear amount of equipment, testing of cutting depths, sticker paper stocks, lamination, and software quirks is, to my mind, on a par with near-professional, home coffee-brewing: metric scales, correct dosage of coffee beans, the right grind size, purified water, puck preparation, flow rate, etcetera. I already have enough furores of my own with trying to convince the home printer to print on the paper-card stock I want it to. The last thing I want is to increase the number of machines throwing hissy fits in my face because it’s the wrong phase of the moon when I’m at my wits end racing to print something off for a special occasion the following morning. I’m not ruling out that stickers might happen, just that doing-it-myself is not for me. On the personal front, after 2025, I’m still recovering from burnout. Though it’s not helpful when one continues to get sucked into the temporal blackholes of YouTube (the “new” smoking), be overwhelmed by dehumanising discourse around ‘Artificially Intelligent’ generation of images online, and catching oneself interrogating any creative idea for art that pops up with whether, or not, it passes cost-benefit analysis. Talk about being brain-rinsed into mechanistic thinking, oi vey! It’s all indicative of the fact that there’s been a distinct lack of humour in my life of late. All fret and no play makes for a crabby, frustrated artist. The sensible thing would be to just say, “stuff the lot of it (AI generation) and do it (Art) anyway!” without expectation for it to — ahem — “perform well.”  2026 Lunar New Year celebrations. (Photo: Vincent Cavanagh © 2026) Thankfully, there have been some diversions in the form of meeting up with WYD friends at a Lunar New Year’s celebration, birthday party invites, wandering around the odd bookshop or two, colouring projects for others, and the odd heritage train ride here and there. A main issue for me is a lack of motivation and sufficient reason for me to overcome lethargy and get outside, physically and mentally. ■ Seoul Issues South Korean flag waving on the evening of the WYD Lisbon Vigil. (Vincent Cavanagh © 2023) I know that one should “never say never”, but with where I’m at right now I don’t see myself going to Korea in 2027 for World Youth Day Seoul. Don’t get me wrong, I do have strong emotions towards the next WYD, and more so the friendships born of the last one, but that doesn’t out-weigh knowing first-hand what the shear toll a WYD pilgrimage can be on a person and how much it truly demands of them. Which isn’t anything I’m willing to put myself through again—especially if it’s not what God intends me to do. At the end of the day, it’s all in His hands, not mine. ■ 2026 Q1 Blog posts8 Jan 2026 – Year in Review: 2025. 18 Feb 2026 – First new bit of art that I have made in a long while. 27 Feb 2026 – Back to Loftus for the annual Tramway Festival. 3 Mar 2026 – Finally posting about the farewell V Set trip to Kiama last year. ■ Parting NotesOn a more positive note, I’ll leave you readers with this Part 2 video by Daniel Folta detailing his process of depicting the Nativity in oil paint. For myself, it is a calm and meditative experience watch him bring his painting to life.  V Set to Kiama waiting to board passengers on Sydney Central Platform 13. (Photo: by Author) Here is a selection of the 35mm film photos — Kodak Gold 200 — that I took whilst on the farewell ‘V Set to Kiama - Christmas by the Sea’ journey from Sydney Central down to Kiama on December 14th, 2025. It was a joint event with the Sydney Bus Museum (Leichhardt) and Sydney Tramway Museum (Loftus) to mark the then coming end of NSW V Set electric trains running on the South Coast Line. Kiama being the limit of electrification on the South Coast. Enjoy!
Vincent Cavanagh
3 March 2026 |
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