The Good Oil

For this episode, I visited Dame Robin White earlier this year at her home and studio in Masterton.Robin is one of our most distinguished painters, holding, among other qualifications, a Diploma in Fine Arts from the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland. She has been appointed as a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to painting and print making and has been the recipient of numerous awards including the New Zealand Arts Icon Award.Her work is held in numerous public and private collections including Te Papa Tongarewa, The Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, The National Gallery of Victoria, The Aratoi Wairarapa Museum of Art and History, The National Gallery of Australia and The Dunedin Public Art Gallery. She is also the subject of several books, including the excellent ‘Something Is Happening Here - Robin White’ by Sarah Farrar, Jill Trevelyan and Nina Tonga, and has exhibited widely, including a major retrospective show in 2022 and 2023.She is represented by McLeavey Gallery in Te Whanganui a Tara or Two Rooms gallery in Auckland.There are images of the paintings and tapa cloth that we talk about on The Good Oil Dame Robin White Instagram Post for your reference.You’ll hear Robin talk about the power of working collaboratively, her time living in Kiribati, her first encounter with Sam Hunt and their resulting friendship, how geometry and tone sit at the heart of some of her most famous paintings, the Gaylene Preston film about her that is currently in production, and you know that question I ask everyone about ‘what work or artist work they would love to live with? Well, Robin has a particularly insightful answer to that.

In this episode I visit Gavin Hurley at his home and studio in Grey Lynn, Auckland.Gavin graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland. His works have been exhibited at, or are held in collections of, the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū and The Suter Te Aratoi o Whakatū, in Nelson. He is represented by Melanie Roger Gallery in Tāmaki Makaurau and Space Gallery in Napier.There are images of the paintings and sculptures that we talk about on The Good Oil Gavin Hurley Instagram Post for your reference. You’ll hear Gavin talk about his inability to paint portraits of any living subjects, a misguided aspiration to be more business like (that nevertheless lead to a great body of work), the close and useful relationship between collage and painting in his practice, his love of old books and their paper stocks as reference and material, how mutton chop sideburns and beards make for great shapes to paint, and how revisiting works in preparation for a show at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery makes him realise how different life was when he painted them.

In this episode I visit Seung Yul Oh at his home and studio in Pt Chevalier, Auckland In the last 20 years since graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and then Master of Fine Arts from the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland, Seung has established a widely celebrated practice encompassing sculpture and painting.His work can be seen across Aotearoa, including at the Brick Bay sculpture park, as part of the exterior of the Te Pae Ōtautahi Convention Centre, and is held in numerous public and private collections including Te Papa Tongarewa, The Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, The Dunedin Public Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Victoria.There are images of the paintings and sculptures that we talk about on The Good Oil Seung Yul Oh Instagram Post for your reference. You’ll hear Seung talk about how pleasantly surprised he was by his secondary school art classes in NZ, how his Sonority minimalist colour field paintings are an examination of self through colours, the wholly emotional approach to choosing colour for those abstract minimalist paintings, contrasted with trying to be as much like a soulless robot as possible in actually applying the paint to create them, the importance of getting lost to allow discovery, but how difficult that can be sometimes and how he pushes through that, and how new loose mark making abstract works have prompted him to pluck up the courage to return to working with oil paint.

In this episode I visit Michael Smither at his home and studio in the Coromandel.Michael is one of Aotearoa's most accomplished painters, exhibited his first solo show in 1961, he is now into the 7th decade of his practice. His work is held in numerous public and private collections including Te Papa Tonga-rewa, The Fletcher Collection, The Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū and The Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Michael has received several awards and honours, including being the recipient of the 1970 Frances Hodgkins Fellowship and he was appointed to the Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2004 for services to the arts. He has also had several books about him published, including the comprehensive and excellent ‘Michael Smither - Painter’ by Trish Gribben.There are images of the paintings that we talk about on The Good Oil Michael Smither Instagram Post for your reference.You’ll hear Michael talk about the importance and influence of the 12 Stations of The Cross on him, and then his rendering of it for his then local church, St Josephs in Taranaki, poaching fish and painting political protests with Ralph Hotere, his love for English painter Sir Stanley Spencer and his influence on his practice, the relationship between his landscape paintings and his portrait paintings and the new, and I must say very impressive, series of portrait paintings of his Dr, Dr David Wilson.