The hand that made the garden

Karl Maughan's Kumeroa. Photo / Glenn Jeffrey

The exhibition by Karl Maughan at the Gow Langsford Gallery shares with the Impressionist Monet a concern for the vivid portrayal of bright sunlight, delicious gardens of flowers, and even the reflection of clouds in water. Yet there's no way anyone could mistake the work for anything by Monet.

First there is the size. These paintings challenge the biggest of Monet's works - except the huge panoramas he did towards the end of his life. Most of his work was quite modest in size. He even cut some down to make them more saleable. Maughan's work has a confident large size.

Then there is the colour. Monet's colour was startling in its time as the Industrial Revolution provided new bright pigments. Chemistry later added even more vivid colour to the artist's armoury. Here, Maughan, as always, uses a high-key palette of colours comparable to Kodachrome.

The effect is to emphasise these are paintings, not just illustrations, because although they are related to nature they are not natural. Particularly effective are the dark reds in the foreground of Penelope Road.

The big technological leap that helped Monet was the invention of the little tin tubes that enabled paint to be carried easily and kept moist. Modern pigments are used in acrylic paint. This enables the paint when used thickly to hold its shape. It also dries very quickly. The viewer can follow the working of the hand that makes a painting and this contributes to the delight conveyed in the paintings in this show, Every Day is Like Sunday.

The handling has a rhythmic quality that makes the flowers dance and holds the compositions together. Special interest comes from examining how the artist finds a quick, almost calligraphic flourish to create his effects. It pays to look closely at the pink rose in Kumeroa, where the tight cluster of petals is indicated in every case by no more than a twist of paint.

Some of the paintings show Maughan continues to rethink aspects of his style. He often uses, very effectively, a curved path to lead the eye into the space of a painting, but in Papatawa he hangs a curtain of leaves above water. That provides an abrupt pattern of shadow as a contrast with the pale water beyond reflecting the clouds in the unseen sky above.

Other works give more place to a hilly landscape beyond clusters of weedy flowers. This creates a much sharper sense of place but detracts from the intense lushness that is so much a part of the appeal of the garden paintings.

Flowers are also the subject of an all-white installation by Anne Rush at the Bath Street Gallery that comes to Auckland by way of the Suter Art Gallery in Nelson.

There is only one variety of flower here - the arum lily, which is handmade and used singly or in groups of two, three or four. These are woven into patterns on the wall but the principal work is a path that wanders park-like through a series of poles decorated at intervals with the flowers. There are even two white benches on which to sit and meditate and a book to record your thoughts.

The whole is marmoreal and solemn and more funereal than is probably intended. It could have been a celebration but its uniformity robs it of romance.

At the same gallery the artist/craftsman Kazu Nakagawa is showing two beautifully crafted works exploring the outward reality of memory under the title, (un)dress.

Outward appearance is given the form of a handsome book made of wood. It can never be opened but its form contains the idea that things in the past that can no longer be seen are real in memory.

The idea is taken further in the other work, where the book is preserved in a cabinet on a superbly made table that appears slender and fragile but is actually wonderfully balanced.

The connection between art and fashion is usually blatant but is subtly linked here by the showing of three dresses designed by the artist. Because he is a craftsman cabinetmaker and sculptor he thinks in three dimensions and these plain, elegant dresses have unusually inventive side panels that unobtrusively mould the shape.

Again there is a play on what is seen and unseen.

Two other shows offer a complete contrast. John Oxborough's Reclining in Red at Sanderson Contemporary Art in Parnell offers wild, reckless Expressionism, mostly centred on nude female models.

Essentially, these are charcoal drawings done with a flourish of line that barely conveys form but suggests the artist's excitement. Further emotional rush produces swatches of red around the lines. The same excitement over the act of painting gives some force to a big double portrait of Dolly and Eli.

At nkb Gallery in Mt Eden Neil Driver paints traditional still-life subjects with immense care in replicating outward appearance.

Alongside his fruit, there are feats of virtuosity such as painting transparent glass jugs and rendering the texture of wood grain or the flaking glaze on a vase. The result is admirable of its kind when depicting the bloom on plums or the surface of shells but offers only mild sensations of stillness and quiet.

AT THE GALLERIES

What: Every Day is like Sunday, by Karl Maughan
Where and when: Gow Langsford Gallery, 26 Lorne St, to July 27
TJ says: Vivid paintings of landscape and gardens where the nature of the medium and its handling are as important as the subject.

What: Arum, by Anne Rush; (un)seen, by Kazu Nagagawa
Where and when: Bath Street Gallery, 43 Bath St, Parnell, to July 25
TJ says: An ambitious white installation using hand-made arum lilies and marble chips offers a path for thought; beautifully crafted books hide thoughts while enclosing memories.

What: Reclining in Red, by John Oxborough
Where and when: Sanderson Contemporary Art, 251 Parnell Rd, to July 12
TJ says: Wild drawings of women done with dash of line and splashes of paint and a big double portrait made with more consideration.

What: Still Life Paintings, by Neil Driver
Where and when: nkb Gallery, 455 Mt Eden Rd, to July 7
TJ says: Skilled still-life painting of traditional kind, with careful attention to conveying texture and transparency.