Seeing what’s there

Seeing what’s there - the individuality of observation

Philippa Blair, Nigel Buxton and Katharina Jaeger, Maurice Lye, Richard McWhannell, Andrew Ross

PG Gallery 192
192 Bealey Avenue, Christchurch

13 October - 6 November, 2020

Instagram images by Philippa Blair, 27 inkjet digital print on cotton rag paper, 350 x 350mm

I went to art school in the early 1980s and drawing was central to our training. We drew from live models one full day a week. I learned that I must look, really look, look hard. And analyse, measure with my eyes. I must draw what I saw, not what I thought I saw. The eye and the hand became very close, responsive to each other. Ideas, I was told, sat as a layer upon this foundational skill. Even within the confines of that discipline every student’s drawings were different. We each look at the world through our own lens. As we look, we filter.

Artworks ‘after nature’ are a mix of what is seen through the eye, formed in the mind and made real through the hands. This exhibition comprises photographs, drawings and paintings by six artists. Some arrange their subject and set it in a context; some consciously record an existing particularity, external to themselves; some chance upon a moment and aim to capture it. All have worked from observation and responded.
Marian Maguire – curator

Maurice Lye, Bare (Tinwald, New Zealand), 2018.
Archival pigment print on cotton rag paper (framed), 485 x 695mm

Andrew Ross, Heron Creek (Nigel), 2019
Selenium toned negative enlargements on silver gelatin paper, 380 x 420mm framed