Pick's paintings surreal and grotesque

By LOUISE POPPELWELL

Aliens, a bearded lady and a woman cradling a rabbit are characters included in artist Seraphine Pick's recent paintings, which can be seen in an exhibition at the Michael Lett Gallery.

Pick is arguably one of the best painters in the younger generation of New Zealand artists. She has exhibited regularly since graduating from Christchurch's Ilam School of Fine Arts in 1987, averaging nearly three shows a year. Her work is incorporated in most major private and public New Zealand art collections as well as several overseas. She has won significant art awards including the Rita Angus Residency in 1995 and the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship in 1999. Since winning the latter prize, she has remained living in Dunedin.

Pick is known for creating large, elaborately detailed canvases that feature innumerable characters - some realistic, some fantastical. Her newest paintings are much smaller and typically illustrate only one figure. "It is like I am breaking down one of my larger paintings and focusing on the separate characters," she says.

Even on this smaller scale, each artwork is powerful and the subject matter still otherworldly. Most of the paintings in this exhibition derive from found pictures gathered from magazines, secondhand books and the internet. Some of the images illustrate sideshow freaks, people with deformities or unusual medical conditions. Pick claims she has always been attracted to imagery that is weird and edgy. She likes to force people out of their comfort zone.

"It was completely intuitive. I selected the images I was attracted to the most and some of them are a bit grotesque."

She has been interested in this type of subject matter since her father introduced her to Goya's artwork as a child. The influences on her work are diverse, but there has always been a surreal element in her painting. "Surrealism has been a big influence on my work since childhood. It makes you think beyond what the painting actually is and about how it relates to things outside art."

Pick does not focus on such bizarre subjects out of morbidity. For her it is "more of an aesthetic thing". She is a skilled painter who works predominantly in oil. This is due in part to the seductive quality of the material. She enjoys the contrast between the content of the artworks and how they were created; at once beautiful and ugly and all the more intriguing for it.

In contrast to the scarier paintings in the exhibition, there are several portraits of Pick's infant son and the young daughter of a friend. She had wanted to paint babies for some time but was determined not to make the works cute or sentimental. "The baby paintings are full figure and larger than life. They are almost alien-like."

Pick has recently returned to painting portraits, something she had done frequently in the past. "I have made similar work before. I often find I have to go back to come forward so to speak, or that I start something and then go back to it much later. It is like I have two strains going in my work and I am led back to each one at different times. Before I was making larger works and maybe I'll go back to that. I like to have a rest from making a particular style of painting, and I am bored easily, so I like to do something different."

She finds it difficult to discuss the exhibition as a whole because there is no tight concept linking the paintings together. Rather, each work is an individual piece and it is left to the viewer to decide how they relate to each other. "These paintings are what they are. They have all come from something. I wanted to put them together and see what happens."

Pick's work is not conceptual - she does not think of an idea and then paint it. She works through her ideas as she paints, using the process as a form of discovery. "I like to let things happen as I work. I work through steps and resolutions by painting. It is an important part of my work."

Exhibition

* What: My Life and Death Trip, by Seraphine Pick

* Where: Michael Lett Gallery, 478 Karangahape Rd

* When: October 21-November 8