Artist captured unique landscapes

A Wairarapa man whose talents with a paint brush earned him a reputation as one of New Zealand's best landscape artists has died.

Don Neilson, 89, led a varied and full life as a professional painter and his works were keenly sought by galleries and art lovers worldwide.

Paintings by Neilson have been presented to dignitaries including the King of Thailand, governors-general, to city councils and to decorate government buildings.

As a young man in Wellington, Neilson was destined for a business career but his passion was always for art, both drawing and painting.

He started by embarking on weekend painting trips around the rugged Wellington and Wairarapa coastline as far north as Castlepoint, sometimes in the company of fellow artist John Magurk. Neilson spoke of the great outdoors as being the only art school he ever attended.

In 1959 - about three years before he pulled up stakes and moved to Wairarapa - Neilson became what is thought to be the first Kiwi artist to visit Antarctica to capture that unique landscape on canvas.

He stayed for two weeks at McMurdo base as a guest of the United States Deep Freeze project.

Temperatures never rose above 20C below freezing during his sojourn.

Watercolours froze and oil paints refused to come out of tubes. Neilson was unable to paint for longer than five minutes at a time. Any painting was hampered by his having to wear heavy clothing and being forced to wear gloves if there was no wind. But the results were amazing.

Neilson's paintings were applauded by veterans of Antarctic expeditions and sold like hot cakes.

In Wairarapa, Neilson lived firstly in Masterton, where his two oldest sons Warwick and Rob attended Wairarapa College, before shifting to Greytown where the family lived in Wood St and in Udy St.

Youngest son Carl attended Kuranui College.

Apart from painting, Neilson incorporated his art in books.

One in particular, The Art of DR Neilson is now a rare and highly sought after book of his best work.

Many of the colour plates are of Wairarapa scenes and Neilson authored an account of his life and philosophy along with explanations of how individual paintings came into being.

In the late 1970s the Neilsons moved to the Bay of Plenty living at Tarawera and then Rotorua but returned to Wairarapa in 1990.

Neilson's many successful art exhibitions helped cement him as one of the country's leading painters.

He was regarded as being very unlucky not to have won a Kelliher Art competition and his appreciation of all art forms went well beyond painting.

He wrote that as a child he had an "obsession with music". Among his many long-term friends were Ed and Juliet Cooke, of Greytown, leading figures in Wairarapa music circles.

At Neilson's funeral service in Masterton on Tuesday Mr Cooke spoke of Neilson and his wife Nola's love of the New Zealand bush and gardening.

Mr Cooke said Don Neilson was a "quiet, complex man and a deep thinker".

That, he said, could probably be put down to all the time he had sat before an easel, contemplating views that were to give him ideal settings for his art.

Neilson is survived by his wife, his three sons, three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.