Heather Straka - PLAYDATE

Dick Frizzell, Yellow

We are in the last week of Dick Frizzell's exhibition Painting the Hunt.
As part of his collaboration with Sam Hunt, Frizzell has produced a limited edition lithograph titled Yellow.

Dick Frizzell
Yellow, 5/60, 2011
Lithograph
760 x 565 mm
Signed, dated and editioned below
$1,200

Contact the Gallery for further details.

Poetry in a new light

By Sarah Catherall

Take one of New Zealand's best-known artists and pair him up with one of our iconic poets and the result is a range of unique artworks that celebrate both their talents.

Since splashing Sam Hunt's poems over canvas, Dick Frizzell is now moved to tears when he reads his new friend's poems, which is an interesting confession for an expressionist pop artist who admits he's never been keen on poetry.

"I avoided it at school. I always thought, 'Poetry, poetry, what the f... is poetry'?," he laughs."But I've been converted to Sam's poetry. It's funny, when you spend a lot of time working with them, I can now hardly quote them without choking. They are so profound."

Frizzell's light-filled studio on the edge of the Haumoana shoreline is filled with art and graphic design books rather than literature.

But the Hawke's Bay painter pulls out one book that has consumed many of his hours over the past year – a complete collection of Hunt's poems. Frizzell has always been restless to produce new works and to challenge himself with new projects, and when The Dominion Post visited his home, the result of that energy graced his studio walls. An exhibition of Frizzell's efforts, Painting the Hunt, has just begun at Paige Blackie Gallery in Wellington.

But Frizzell and Hunt's collaboration only came about by chance. About three years ago, an advertising agency approached the artist about creating a new Kiwi icon for giant billboards similar to Frizzell's famous Four Square man.

That idea didn't take off, until one of the creatives came up with the idea of Frizzell painting a Hunt poem. Frizzell was also keen to capture the Kiwi spirit, rather than an image.
Read More

Sam Hunt performing in Page Blackie Gallery

Karl Maughan - The Language of Flowers

Written by Sarah Catherall

For an artist who is renowned for painting splendid rhododendrons and gardens exploding with colour, Karl Maughan knows surprisingly little about flowers and plants. In fact, the Auckland home he shares with his partner, novelist Emily Perkins, and three children, is almost colourless. Green natives are dotted about, amid a cluster of sunflowers and cornflowers. "But it's a very green garden," he says.

Maughan is one of our most prolific artists who hasn't deviated from the flowers and gardens he has become renowned for, which he has been painting for almost 25 years since he graduated from art school.

His surrealist fantasy landscapes grace the walls of galleries in New Zealand and overseas, and they have increased in value over the years, now fetching more than $55,000 for large ones that fill walls.

His newest work is on show at Wellington's Page Blackie Gallery. Maughan is a towering 1.9 metres (6ft 3in) tall and wearing casual shorts and a comfortable T-shirt when we meet. He wouldn't look out of place in a garden, although you would expect to see him with a hoe in his hand rather than a paint brush. However, when he paints, he works off photographs of gardens.

That wasn't always the case. Until he shifted to London in the early 1990s, Maughan tried to paint in gardens, but the inclement weather and conditions forced him to his East End studio, and he is more comfortable painting inside today.

Read more here