Pip Davies in her garden, in front of the Pacific Ocean at Haumoana. Photo / Tom Kitchin
Pip Davies in her garden, in front of the Pacific Ocean at Haumoana. Photo / Tom Kitchin
Opinion by Tom Kitchin
Haumoana artist Pip Davies sits down with Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga Hastings Art Gallery kairuruku whakatairanga marketing co-ordinator Tom Kitchin to explain how the world outside her front window shapes her paintings.
Pip Davies sits on a couch in her Haumoana lounge, looking out at the colourful garden in front of her home – with a glimpse of Cape Kidnappers through the trees.
The sun is streaming through the sky. As we take pauses for thought through our conversation, you can hear the waves crash up to the shoreline, right across the road from Davies’ home.
Davies’ work The Ceremony in the Air, a network of 23 acrylic paintings on fabric, is on display at Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga—Hastings Art Gallery.
She created the paintings in her front room, where she looked out at the wide, panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean.
She points out a dirty-looking, green agave plant in her garden. As she describes it, it is green with a “blush of grey” over it.
Pip Davies’ exhibition, The Ceremony in the Air, is now on at Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga – Hastings Art Gallery. Photo / Max Bull-Crossan
“There’s a range of colours called glaucous – appearing to have a mist over it – plants do this as a response to a coastal environment,” she says.
“A lot of the colours I use have that grey element to them – you can use grey as a mixture, and it softens things as if you were short-sighted – like I am. If there were an influence, then it would be of that sort of colour palette.”
The patterns you can see in The Ceremony in the Air are determined by a geometric pattern known as ‘Einstein tiles’.
One might think that’s a reference to world-famous scientist Albert Einstein, but that’s far from the truth.
“No, he didn’t do bathrooms,” Davies laughs.
“It was just a wonderful, odd thing that just popped out of the internet,” she says.
She saw a Guardian article describing these tiles – a newfound formation that never repeats.
“Einstein means one tile or one stone in German, nothing to do with anything else,” she says.
“They’re conforming to a pattern and physics, but they’re not regularly occurring.”
Again, the environment outside her front door, along with her Nichiren Buddhist beliefs, influenced her decision to use these tiles in her work.
“You walk on the stones, and they give under your feet. There’s an infinite variety of the same thing - repetition. What I’m probably influenced by is the repetition of the stone.
“There’s an awareness – it makes you more aware than if you’re just walking along the footpath and you don’t actually notice one foot in front of the other.
“The waves coming in would have that same sort of sense that something could happen that could disrupt your pattern… it’s like looking out at the waves and going, they’re all very similar, but you can’t predict them.”
Davies’ The Ceremony in the Air, including the patterns and colours she uses, is at Hastings Art Gallery until October 5.
