Instead he painted a water diviner, a practice still used in parts of Australia where proponents believe they can find ground water with two metal rods or, as pictured in the mural, sticks.
Painted last year, it is one of dozens of large-scale murals to appear across rural Australia, turning sides of buildings, water tanks and old grain silos into striking canvasses.
“Painting walls is a bit like surfing, every wave is different, every wall is different. That’s the biggest challenge for me,” Magee told Reuters from his art studio in Sydney’s inner-western suburbs.
“Scaling and the technical things are just part of the job now.”
Many of the works were painted during a long drought that devastated communities and led to widespread water restrictions including in agricultural towns like Barraba in central New South Wales.
Magee said that during a research trip he saw a diviner working with water bore drillers during the drought, which only started to ease early this year.
While broadly considered street art, the sheer size of the murals makes them a phenomenon of their own.
Many artists use cherry picker cranes or lifts to reach their canvasses, go through hundreds of litres of paint, and spend weeks on their murals.