NZ ICONS Creative Artists

John Webber – Captain Cook’s Illustrator

• His job was to record what he saw on his voyage with Captain Cook to those back home in England.

• Remember in 1776 there were no cameras or video cameras. Everything needed to be drawn or written down in order to have an accurate account of what they discovered.

• He painted as an Englishman, recording what he saw from an English viewpoint.

• His Creativity came from a need to…?

Communicate

John Webber - Queen Charlotte Sound, Marlborough Sounds, 1788

Kupe, journeyed from Hawaii to NZ. His waka would have had sails like these ones, drawn by John Webber

Charles HeaphyAs a land surveyor he was interested in recording the landscapes around him and their changing face in the early period of New Zealand’s settlement.Above: A

watercolour painting of Wellington Harbour

Right: A watercolour of Russell in the Bay Islands

• Charles Heaphy was also an English Painter like John Webber. They painted the New Zealand landscape with an English eye

• Compare these next two paintings of Mt Taranaki. One by Charles Heaphy and the other by Christopher Perkins.

• What do you notice in the way they both paint the landscape?

• Note the date that Christopher Perkins painted his painting. What do you think has happened?

Charles Heaphy - Mt Taranaki, 1840

Christopher Perkins - Mt Taranaki, 1931

• Both these two artists were using their Creativity to Communicate.They were telling their audience what New Zealand looked like.

• Charles Heaphy was communicating to a public who were British, new to New Zealand and looking at their new country through the eyes of an Englishman.

• Christopher Perkins was communicating to a public more certain about their New Zealandness.

• His audience had fought a World War and made a name for themselves over seas as ingenious kiwis.

• Christopher Perkins was creating a new voice, a special New Zealand language to paint the ‘marvellous light’ of New Zealand and the sharp, rugged landforms of the landscape.

Finding A New Zealand Voice

Rita Angus – Cass,1936

Do you think Rita Angus who painted this is using that new voice to paint the New Zealand landscape? Why?

How do you think the small figure in the painting feels? Why?

• Remember at this time few people had cars or telephones. The roads across the country were terrible and many people lived in isolated communities a long way from our few cities and even further by boat to England and Europe.

• Rita Angus was influenced by the art of Christopher Perkins and together they did a lot to create a new way of painting New Zealand for New Zealanders.

• Especially they emphasised the isolation and emptiness of the New Zealand landscape with small areas of settlement and signs of progress struggling against the looming mountains and hills of New Zealand’s rugged interior.

Rita Angus - Central Otago, 1940

Rita Angus - Mountains, Cass, 1936

Rita Angus - Scrub Burning, Northern Hawkes Bay, 1966

Rita Angus - Hawkes Bay Landscape, 1966

• Rita Angus’s sister, Edna, was one of the first women in New Zealand to hold a pilot’s licence.

• Rita Angus portrayed a rugged isolated New Zealand in her paintings.

• For Creative New Zealanders such as Richard Pearse who invented the first aeroplane, his flying inventions were an escape from reality.

Rita Angus - The Aviatrix, 1933

Colin McCahon - 6 Days in Nelson & Canterbury, 1950What do you notice about this painting?What is it missing that the other paintings so have portrayed?

Colin McCahon was New Zealand’s first and most famous Modernist artist• Modernism was a special way of being

creative• It celebrated the reality of painting for

painting sake• It celebrated the 2D reality of painting• It was opposed to being realistic in any

way• Colin McCahon was Creative because he

too wanted to communicate his new way of describing New Zealand

Colin McCahon - North Otago,1967

Colin McCahon - Takaka, Night and Day, 1948

Colin McCahon’s Creativity was also influenced by his strong religious beliefs. In particular he believed the stark, unpopulated New Zealand landscape to be similar to the promised land of the bible. The words ‘I AM’ are taken from Genesis.http://www.nzfilmtvdvds.co.nz/index.php/shop/dvd/documentary/colin-mccahon-i-am.html

Colin McCahon’s Creative Vision

Colin McCahon said about New Zealand:

Here was a landscape of splendor, and order and peace. I saw an angel in this land. I saw something logical, orderly and beautiful belonging to the land and not yet to its people. Not yet understood or communicated, not even really yet invented. My work has largely been to communicate this vision and to invent the way to see it.

• New Zealand artists have continued to create new ways to communicate to their New Zealand audience.

• Some have celebrated our every day popular culture using objects we recognise as particularly ‘Kiwi’.

•Dick Frizzell and Jeff Thompson are good examples:

The Four Square Man The Maori Tiki

By Dick Frizzell

Kiwi Food like the Pavlova Words to the Maori haka!

By Dick Frizzell

The kiwi gumboot

The good old family Holden Station Wagon

By Jeff Thomson

Flax Kite

Cows!

Why do you think Jeff Thomson chooses to make his art out of corrugated iron?

Why is corrugated iron something that communicates to an audience – this is New Zealand!

A corrugated iron flax carpet… Only in New Zealand

Jeff Thomson

Other artists have used Maori art and found creative ways to communicate traditional designs in a modern way.

Michael Parekowhai has done this:

Other artists have continued to celebrate the beauty of our natural landscape but also have begun to communicate their concerns about the environment through their work.

These artists make us look at the landscape in a new and thoughtful way.

Virginia King and Chris Booth are both examples of this…

Virginia King

Chris Booth

Chris Booth – Rotoroa Island