Printmaking extends skill base of Whanganui artist

Peter Shepherd and his work is the subject of the Red Door Gallery's January exhibition. Photo / Paul Brooks

Peter Shepherd is renowned for a certain style of art, one which involves the use of many different types of material and a knack for joining them together to make a functioning piece of creativity.

Now he's trying a whole new direction, one he considers more like "art".
Peter attends harakeke paper-making and printmaking courses with local tutor Marty Vreede, and that has influenced a whole new range of artistic experimentation.
"I feel I'm doing more in the way of 'art' now," he says. "I always felt that art needed a story behind it, of why you did it. It's only in the last couple of years I've started looking at that."

Peter's work is the subject of the January exhibition at Red Door Gallery in Putiki and there are some very different works on display.
There are cloth wall hangings of panels made up of prints of coins, pre-decimal, mostly. Shillings, florins, pennies and the like, all accurately carved and printed. The story? "Who doesn't want to print money?" he says. "Those coins I've used in my art, my craft, for a long time: probably 20 years. Making jewellery and pendants out of them ..."
Now he has carved their images and created prints, some on cloth and some on hand made harakeke paper.

"Once I had a go at printmaking with Marty — and he's such a wonderful teacher — I fell in love with printmaking."
He took it up a year ago at a summer school. He carried on under Marty's tutelage in night classes.

Also on the wall was one print of a series of three, with barbed wire being the dominant feature. The first one has a figure encased in a cage of wire.
"It's about men's mental health," he says. "You don't get to choose how you start in life because things are just put upon you. So to protect yourself, you put yourself in a cage. So while you don't get to choose how you start, but you do get to choose when you begin your life. It's called 'From the start to the beginning'.

"There's another one entitled 'Everybody's important'." He did that after meeting a homeless man in Wellington.
Another piece uses eyes to symbolise the fact that when you're growing up there's a feeling that there's always somebody watching and judging.
"Funnily enough, it was all three independent things I did without really thinking about it, and then realised that they're all the same thing.
"I think, for me, I really got in touch with art by doing that."

Another piece is the central part of beaten copper fireguard, a sailing ship, entitled "Ever wonder what happened to the Endeavour". It harks back to his known style of work.
"I'll always do that, but this is something new." And because Peter's not always dealing in large metal and wood structures, he is now able to take his artwork with him when he goes on holiday.

"I need to always extend and try something different," he says. With his printmaking he has certainly proved his ability and versatility. Peter's exhibition will run at Red Door throughout January.