There was a large wreath with flowers spelling out the word “Eternity” at the funeral of artist Martin Sharp this week. After his funeral at Sydney’s Christ Church St Laurence, the crowd took to chalking “Eternity” on the pavement.

A Martin Sharp artwork

He was  dubbed “the other Mr Eternity” by the Sydney Morning Herald on page one as it reported his death this week. The nickname might be truer than the headline writer knew. Martin Sharp may get to meet the first Mr Eternity, Arthur Stace in heaven.

Arthur Stace chalked the word “Eternity” across the streets of Sydney for 37 years, and was converted from a background which included being a runner for his sister’s brothel.

Martin Sharp had a different background as the leader of a bohemian group of artists known as the “Yellow house” group. He first came to fame as a satirical illustrator on Richard Neville’s OZ magazine, which was a standard-bearer of the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Like Arthur Stace he became fascinated with the word Eternity, and through his artwork kept the Stace legend alive, responsible for the word ‘Eternity’ lighting the harbour bridge for the start of the new millennium.

Martin Sharp was an artist of obsessions. One of the chief of these was a suspicious fire at Luna Park Sydney that destroyed the ghost train and took lives, including six children.

“He was obsessed with the Luna Park ghost train fire (he claimed it was arson with good reasons not an accident)”, says Polly Seidler who corresponded with him in bursts over the years. “He saw significance that the father with two sons who died was called ‘John Godson’”.

Sharp thought that Seidler’s decision to go to Moore College was extreme but talked with her of a “shared faith”. She believes he was saved.

“For me his letter to me ‘Jesus saves’ says it all,” Seidler told Eternity. In this letter, Sharp was comforting Seidler, whose cousin had died.

It was following the Luna Park fire in 1979 that Sharp investigated Christianity. At his funeral, one friend recalled he was relieved when Sharp became obsessed with Jesus rather than the singer Tiny Tim.

‘Pentecost’ by Martin Sharp

He was clearly an unusual Christian. Many Eternity readers might regard him as rather liberal.

Seidler points to clues that Sharp left in his artwork about Christianity. Besides Eternity Haymarket! (which scrawls Eternity across a van Gogh sky above Haymarket) she points to a cross on a painting called Pentecost.