Shorts, togs and art by the sea

Michael Smither and Tom Mutch are showing work at home on the Coromandel, writes PENELOPE CARROLL.

Painters and friends Michael Smither and Tom Mutch have eschewed mainstream galleries for their latest joint exhibition. Mutch's Pumpkin Flat house near Kuaotunu on the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula is doubling as an art gallery, with three large oils by each artist hung in the kitchen-dining-living area.

Outside the Box is their second joint summer show, with beach visitors coming through in shorts and swimsuits, seeking respite from sand, surf and sun. It's also a liberating change from city-gallery formality for Smither and Mutch: "I like people coming in to view works in relaxed holiday mode," says Mutch. "I enjoy showing them a working studio and the process of printmaking."

The two have a painting relationship and friendship stretching back 30 years. When Mutch moved to the peninsula nine years ago, Smither followed. His house and studio are set back from the sea in a cluster of baches at Otama, a few minutes' drive from Mutch's Birds Nest Studio.

Mutch was a 19-year-old Sydney butcher boy when Taranaki surf drew him across the Tasman. Smither was an up-and-coming New Plymouth artist.

At the the Govett Brewster Gallery, Mutch was fascinated by a Smither painting of Christ on the cross.

"I was making surfboards at the time. I wanted to make paintings like that. I met Mike and asked him if he would teach me to paint."

So began a close, seven-year, painting relationship.

"He made me realise art is a profession and you have to commit yourself. He was pretty tough on me - if he thought I was slacking he would throw me out of the studio."

A lot of his early paintings were influenced by Smither's neo-realist work.

"I learned lots of techniques from Michael; I also had to learn to forget them so I could express myself. There is an emotional and intellectual meeting place I'm after. I know a painting has to be well-made, but not to the detriment of emotion. Once you have mastery of techniques, it is no longer about that."

During several years in England he developed a more symbolic and allegorical style and, today, describes his work as painting stories with the landscape. He puts his use of primary colours down to his inability to shake off his Australian roots.

"I find New Zealand has a bleak edge to it and a lot of artists don't use primary colours. Look at McCahon, Hotere and Fomison."

Smither's use of primary colours drew him - and the colours of the Coromandel are the colours of his childhood, he says, especially the red dirt.

Mutch's house and studio beside the Waiata Stream are a few minutes' walk from Kuaotunu Beach.

When Smither visited Mutch, he immediately liked the area and decided to stay. At Otama he practices t'ai chi each day on the beach and with his partner Gillian McGregor gathers tuatua, mussel and crab shells for collaborative creations.

Finished canvases of sand and shell compositions hang from the kitchen walls. Works in progress monopolise the kitchen table. Sculptures based on shells dominate the basement garage along with t'ai chi cloud sculptures due for exhibition in Wellington in February. Upstairs are unfinished oil paintings - more works in progress.

The spacious, corrugated-iron structure provides living and work space. The studio, with its curved wall, is a place to paint and a place to share a meal and a bottle of wine around the table.

It's here, after a stint away travelling five years ago, that Smither started to rework a series of paintings of boats in Okahu Bay and completed the three domestic-themed paintings for Outside the Box.

"I waited till the age of 55 for some OE: I think I was frightened I would go overseas and find I wasn't good enough. But I've laid that ghost to rest," Smither says.

He spent two weeks in Chicago, studying just one large painting, Un Dimanche d'ete a la Grande-Jatte, a work by early-20th-century pointillist Georges Seurat.

"I was very inspired by what I saw. I came back and started a new series. The difference was I knew what to do. Sometimes you start a painting, get to a certain stage and can't finish it."

Such as the original Okahu Bay series. "I felt they were really good but not finished. I told Tom, 'If anything happens to me, consider these as finished.' But I knew there were thousands of paintings inside them."

He returned not only knowing what to do with his Okahu series but full of confidence."I was at a point, generally, where life had sapped me. There I discovered my work would stand up alongside most of the work that I saw, that it was on a par with it."

Smither went backwards in time to paint childhood memories of a paddling pool in rocks at Kawaroa. "I didn't have the confidence to paint them until after this trip."

His paintings in Outside the Box revisit his domestic life 30 years ago.

"When I was in the States I gave classes to two women painters who wanted to see how I develop a painting. I had a notebook of 30 domestic drawings and worked with one of them. I really enjoyed painting it and realised that there was a lot I hadn't said - a lot of unfinished business."

The paintings took shape at Otama and back in New Plymouth, when he was looking after his sick mother.

"I worked in the same studio where I used to do all of those prints with my father [printmaker Bill Smither, who also taught Mutch printmaking]."

Smither's grandson Finn who turns 2 next month served as a model for the three works which the artist describes as "bringing together 40 years of technical experience and some of the most moving observations of my life."

They show toddler son Thomas, sitting on a potty, daughter Sarah eating corn and Sarah with pink rubber washing-up gloves.

Mutch's three oil-on-board paintings are of Kuaotunu beach lilies, the Hauraki Gulf veteran wooden mullet boat Ngahere, now moored in the Kuaotunu estuary, and a blue pot by local artist Ian Webster among the red hot pokers and lacebark trees of Mutch's garden.

* Outside the Box, Birds Nest Studio, Pumpkin Flat Rd, Kuaotunu, until January 30.