From the MTG: Artwork tells story of the times

TV1, by Juliet Peter. Collection of Hawke's Bay Museums Trust, Ruawharo Tā-ū-rangi

I've been waiting for an opportunity to write about this wonderful print by Juliet Peter since I saw it in the Hawke's Bay Museums Trust collection.

Right now seems perfect, as with the last few weeks of Matariki festival we've all been looking skyward to catch a glimpse of Pleiades.

With border bubbles opening, air travel seems to hold special significance and of course, with winter at its frostiest, we're all tucked up at night in front of our televisions.

Titled TV1, Peter made this work in 1967 when television had been free to air for several years in New Zealand, but was not yet broadcasting live. The phenomenon of this new medium must have been something else.

In the 1960s, air travel was becoming more accessible with most emigrants arriving here on planes. By 1967, travel had grown here to the extent that Auckland International Airport had opened in Mangere.

This print is made by artist Judith Eleanor Jane Cowan (nee Peter) CNZM. Known through her working life as Juliet Peter, she was a printmaker, potter and illustrator born in mid-Canterbury in 1915.

Peter had an unsettled early life, as a baby, moving to live with her aunt who died while Juliet was still a preschooler. She returned to live with her parents but her mother died and her father became ill. Orphaned by age 11, Peter moved with her sister to Britain.

Showing an early interest in art, she had the entrepreneurial wit to earn pocket money by drawing her neighbours' houses. In 1930, Peter returned to Aotearoa, and attended Canterbury School of Fine Arts.

After art school, Peter landed a job in Wellington with School Publications as an illustrator. There she produced the most wonderfully imaginative and beautifully designed illustrations for educational books.

At this time Peter was active in the local art scene where she was the contemporary of Avis Higgs, Rita Angus, Doreen Blumhardt and Roy Cowan, all of whom are also well represented in the Trust Collection.

Cowan and Peter married and they returned to London in 1951 for a short while. Studying at Hammersmith School of Fine Arts, Peter was introduced to pottery and lithography, processes she worked with for the remainder of her life.

Mary Bestall gifted this wonderful work by Peter to the Trust Collection and it has all the trademarks of those extraordinary school journal illustrations, despite it being made after she had left the Department of Education.

Jam-packed with imagery, Peter somehow manages to instil a sense of simplicity in the work. Despite there being only four colours, the effect of light and shadow totally electrify the work.

Lithographic processes are useful for artists as it allows the print to include the most delicate drawn marks. Interestingly Peter has chosen to include decorative plant forms that are more robust. The plant motifs emphatically stamped on top of this nighttime scene, perhaps as a kind of assertion of the wealth of the natural world.

More critically recognised for her pottery, Peter's illustrations are also wonderful. However, this graphic style is often dismissed as lightweight and the term "illustrative" used deprecatingly. In fact, Peter's works were not only of their time, but somehow seem "of this time" too, and should not be underestimated for their ability to represent the most compelling issues of our world.

You can view this work in MTG Hawke's Bay's online collection.

• Toni Mackinnon is art curator at MTG.