Michael Smither – Central Otago

A major new suite of paintings
and limited edition screenprints

on exhibition until 11 March 2012
at The Diversion Gallery, 10 London Quay, Picton waterfront

This new series of paintings is breathtaking—in its scale, vision and expression of light, form, and connection to place. Michael Smither, one of New Zealand’s pivotal contemporary artists, regards it as his final statement on his Central Otago.

This is without doubt one of the most significant suites of surrealist paintings of his career, the final expression of ideas he has been exploring since he lived in Central Otago in the early 1970s. But where those early paintings were all about a youthfully sensuous reading of the Otago hills, these have the patina of a lifetime of experience
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Smither went to Otago as Frances Hodgkins Fellow in 1970 with his wife and young family. It was a return to familiar territory—his mother’s family came from the Maniototo, and he had stayed there with his aunts. He produced a series of paintings, much loved for their sensuous expression of the Otago hills, evocative of sunkissed human forms and an embracing of life and love.

That sensuality is still evoked in these new paintings, although now, mostly cloaked with snow under the clear Central Otago light (with some reference to Goya’s controversial Maja paintings, one naked, one clothed.) The twin paintings Summer and Winter (both on canvas, a rare medium for Smither who usually paints on board) carry that story between them, inspired by drawings 40 years ago from Coronet Peak, looking down into the lakes. After a 2007 trip to St Bathans and Ranfurly, staying with painter Grahame Sydney, he did a series of drawings and paintings but later realised that, other than Hawkduns Abstract, they needed to be on a much grander scale. ‘Those 2007 paintings were like oil sketches by comparison… In doing these [on this enlarged scale] I discovered what the paintings were about.’

The result is a series of five major paintings (along with accessibly priced Hawkduns prints), much richer in texture than his 1970s work, and reflecting his quite different view on revisiting. ‘Those [early works] were all about the sexiness of shape and colour… these have a patina of time’. In the end, these are very personal paintings, with strong metaphor of sensuality.

About the paintings:

Mt Ida and Foothills, radiating light, is the largest painting of Central Otago, a subject that has fascinated him throughout his life. He knew landscape well in the Maniototo, Ranfurly and St Bathans region. Revisiting it while staying with painter Grahame Sydney in 2007, he did drawings from a café called Whiskery Bill’s near Ranfurly.
‘It’s surrounded by land that’s been eaten to the nub, so I went to a lot of trouble to get that sense of being used and overworked, with the mountain in the background with its magnificent folds.’
He completed a series of smaller paintings, similar in subject and title, but felt a need to go back and rework them on a much larger scale to reach their full potential, to convey the power and intensity and place the viewer in the landscape instead of looking at it.
 
Summer and Winter paintings: While reviewing material for the book Michael Smither Painter, the artist rediscovered drawings completed in 1970 when he climbed Coronet Peak near Queenstown with John Maynard. As he created the painting he realise he needed to take a different approach, with the passage of time.
He thought particularly of Goya’s controversial Maja paintings—one clothed, one naked—and decided to paint one summer painting with the golden hills he focused on in his youth, and another with the sensuality of the hills evident but cloaked in winter snow.
Thus Summer is the only work in this final Central Otago series with the signature golden hills of his sought-after 1970s paintings, when he lived there with his wife Elizabeth and young family.
Summer and Winter are on canvas, rare for Smither, who mostly paints in oil on board.
 

Breathtaking in its scale and the abyss at its centre, Snowstorm, Hawkduns hovers in a surreal space between abstraction and reality. The skiff of snow lifting off the mountaintops recalls the artist’s ethereal Cloud paintings, but the intensity is all about his emotional relationship with the shadowed shapes and folds of Central Otago.
In the process of painting these works on this scale, Smither came to realise he saw the landscape in a different way to his youth; a later-life look, with ‘a new set of emotional guises impressed on it’. And in working them up to the correct scale, he says he started to discover what the Central Otago paintings were about. Hawkdun, Abstract was the largest of the 2007 series and the only one he later felt had achieved the correct scale. Sublime in colour, the sensual, spooky folds provoke a deeply emotional response.

About the artist:

Michael Smither is one of New Zealand's most sought-after senior painters today, for his iconic super-realist and highly coloured paintings and screenprints which capture a unique and often very personal view of his world.

In the past decade, he has returned to his work of the late 1970s and early 1980s, mapping the linkage between the harmonies of colour and those of music - the spectrum and the musical scale.

However, he has continued to work on oil paintings of subjects which he has felt still needed to be fully resolved, such as the Otago series.

Born in New Plymouth in 1939, much of his earlier work focused on the Taranaki region, and raising awareness of environmental issues, particularly the impact of human occupation on the coastline and waterways. His rock and stones paintings are amongst his most sought-after; the recently completed Cray Pot is the first in which he directly links the colour harmonic works with those rock paintings.

His other major series were the Otago paintings, and his domestic series, intense, emotionally charged paintings of his family in domestic life.

He has created screenprints based on a number of his best-loved paintings, with subtle enhancements to colours and shadows within the work. We have a selection of these available to view on request, along with new silk screen prints from his harmonic and realist series, ranging from $300-$1500.

For more information and images visit the Michael Smither artist’s page.
 

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