Artist Justin van der Berg may not leave his house very often, but he feels the beating pulse of Newtown from within the four walls of his home. Living in an old terrace, he’s spent three years restoring the home on a shoestring budget. Embarking on his fourth restoration of an old terrace in Newtown with his partner Michael, this creative duo shares a long and heartfelt love affair with the suburb.

Today, artist Justin van de Berg loves to stay indoors and watch the world go by from his kitchen window. On a regular day you can find him painting in his studio, or lying on a day bed, looking out through dappled light onto the garden. All around him are the signs of his creativity. Trained as a fashion designer and having worked as an interior product designer, van der Berg is still drawn to creative problem solving. His much loved terrace is a work in progress; by turns a gallery, office, miniature factory and supper house for lucky locals.

The home on Brown Street also bares testimony to this couple’s European lineage and their regular trips to France to thrift for objects in the flea markets. We asked Justin to explain his home; to describe his creative career and tell us what inspires him as a painter living in Newtown.

“I used to make marionettes when I was boy and do puppet shows at the school library. It was that classic thing where everyone could see you were gay, but you couldn’t see it yourself. I came here from Darling Downs in Queensland because my sister lived here and I moved in with her looking for work. I worked as a swimwear designer, at Brian Rochford, and then Speedos… then at home one day I had made a roman blind and I said to myself ‘I might see if I can sell these’. I suddenly became the Cotton Blind Company. That was a small business I operated from home for 15 years.”

“I really love the design aspect, of thinking things through. The doing is often great – but it is actually the process behind the making I enjoy the most. I’ve dabbled in illustration and painting for most of my life, but after I became unwell, I had to stay home more so just threw myself into my painting. That was in 2009 and I have now been showing work each year since then. I have a major show at my home each year.”

“With the design of this house, there was no real plan, it has just sort of evolved over the years. And because I was not working when we bought this house we had to ‘make do’.”

“The house is now my studio as well. We’ve done a lot of change here mainly in making the house a lot a lighter. We bought it from someone who had done a faux Victoriana job on it– kind of like you’d see in the 90’s. You know, it was all black and salmon pink.”

“From then it has grown organically with things I have made; things I have designed and things I have found on the street and repurposed. There are also lots of things that we found together on holidays. We go to auctions, we fixed up old things. We did this house on much more of a shoestring than when we were younger. It is more like a theatre with lot of props you can move around, or like a set. You can move stuff around. This home is very much a lived in place. We are not precious. All around the house there are places where the eye can rest happily,” van der Berg says.