New and recent works by selected artists create an inspiring visual experience at every turn and corner of the gallery. Several Bernard Waters paintings are featured, described by renowned sculpture and friend Terry Stringer, “… colour harmonies, with Parisian style from his background there. French tinted spectacles on New Zealand eyes." Waters mastered printmaking, designed a stained-glass window, plus costumes and sets for theatre. He participated in many group shows in Paris at the Grand Palais, as well as being awarded a bronze medal at the Salon des Beaux Arts, Juvisy. The various and varied influences that affected Water’s work and development combine to produce a most colourful life story and oeuvre.
If you missed Prue MacDougall’s exhibition, now’s your chance to get up close and personal. Prue creates complex collaged work, highlighting the layering of memory, time and travel. At times playful and whimsical, at other times serious and introspective, she explores themes of journeying, both physically across the world and chronologically through time.
Take to the stairs to view the artists studio. Traditionalists will be captivated by the exquisitely rendered paintings by Peter Atkinson. His recent body of work considers implements and objects as the remains of moments of creativity in the service of everyday life, that served and beautified routines and ways of life that now remain only in fragments of memory, images of childhood and the stories of our parents. Come for a trip down memory lane.
In contrast, across the easels and paint pots, you can view the gestural work of Kathryn Carter. Her recent exhibition, Rangitapu, explores a sense of place in her paintings that connects her to the New Zealand landscape through observational studies of islands and headland landforms predominantly in Auckland and Northland. The atmospheres encountered in these works relate to the importance of identity, place and the sacred. She believes there is continued movement and change in the times we live in, impacting our perception and potentially heightening the sense of value embedded within these sacred spaces.
- January 2021