By AUDREY YOUNG
Picture it: Norman Kirk leaning against a counter having a yarn with Peter Jackson behind a Hobbit nearby.
Winston Peters having a laugh over dinner with Billy T. James and Barry Crump. Rob Muldoon buttering his plate of bread with Sam Hunt, Pete Montgomery and Sir Peter Blake looking
on.
History deems it impossible but the fact that all have been customers at the late night Green Parrot cafe in central Wellington is now recorded in a 5m x 2m painting on the restaurant wall.
The cafe has been a favourite of politicians over the years where the likes of National deputy Gerry Brownlee likes to order pork chops after the House has risen and Mr Peters likes to order loud music with raw scallops and flounder.
The artist, Denis Hall, is a former taxi driver turned sculptor who became familiar with the clientele and the Sakoufakis family owners when he stopped off for dinner in his driving days 25 years ago.
Angelo Sakoufakis had asked for a replica of a previous mural that had been on the restaurant wall before it expanded - an array of sporting activities. But Hall came up with the eventual theme.
The painting, which has taken six months off-and-on work in a friend's basement, isn't quite finished yet.
"There is room for a few more. I thought I'd just bung a few more people in over the next six months or so.
"And I figured there might be the odd person who didn't like being in it so I'll just paint them out and stick someone else in.
"I'm going to put some stuff on some of the tables and Winston Peters wants me to open his eyes a bit."
It is Hall's first painting. "I'm known as a sculptor. I don't belong to the fine arts fraternity and never aspired to."
He purposely wanted to make it appear as though it had been dashed off. "It's a painting in a restaurant. It's not a Last Supper or anything."
