A week in Northland

A week in Northland

 

 

I was in Northland late January - early February and packed my sketchbook and mini watercolour set alongside the togs and sunscreen. First off, it was great to draw palm trees; we don’t see nearly enough of them down on the Wellington south coast and they always seem exotic to me, evoking Matisse’s lovely South of France ‘window paintings’. 

That's why the facade of Whangarei's Municipal Buildings appealed - the palm trees made it look like it was in Jamaica instead of NZ! Rust St has lots of architectural gems like this.

Ten people at the Oakura Bay beach house, an hour north of Whangarei. Ages ranged from 6 to 86 years, and among us was a card shark (left) who introduces people to fast gin rummy card games wherever he goes.  

 

The view from the beach house. Not many old baches left now at this coastal community on Ngatiwai land. Instead, mostly grand (holiday?) homes.  

 

The shells were one of the special things about this beach. This became a postcard...

 

This was a first - painting fish from life. They'd been caught the night before from kayaks and we filleted them and had them in an amazing ceviche: chopped raw fish, finely diced red onions and tomatoes, salt, lots of lime juice and fresh coriander. Next morning, I rushed to paint their still beautiful colours before they were returned to the elements. 

The Quarry Arts Centre just north of Whangarei is a very inspiring place and I spent an afternoon drawing there. Set in a decommissioned quarry, it was founded by potter and painter Yvonne Rust (1922-2002) in 1982. Along with others such as Barry Brickell, it was rescued from becoming a permanent rubbish dump, and a working arts community was set up. It has kilns, a café, gallery and print studio, and a variety of workshops are still being run here. 

 

 

I met ceramic artist Keil Cas, usually based in Wellington but seeing family and making use, over the summer, of one of the many studios dotted around the former quarry. He was about to pit-fire some of his clay taonga puoro – traditional Māori flutes – so we had the privilege of watching him down at the kiln area. 

Here he is stoking the fire to produce embers for the firing...

 

It's nice to know we don't have to go to Barcelona to see spiraling brick columns.
They were beautiful to behold but induced a kind of visual dyslexia in me
when I tried to draw them! 

The 'Scallop House' was another obvious one to sketch. I met painter Butch Britton while sitting here: “The roof is made from draped hessian with concrete poured onto it; it needs to be fixed every year now!” It might be impractical but we both agreed it looks so romantic. There is work by generations of artists dotted all around.

Butch lived here in the 1980s with his then 11-year-old daughter and remembers a place of music and shared creativity, which also hosted leading painters such as Michael Smither and Philippa Blair.

But he laments the rules and regulations that came into play as the Centre moved towards a commercial model. “You can see some stone walls and the remains of buildings up there in the hills; that’s where some artists wanted to build their own accommodation. But now we can’t go up there and artists are not allowed to stay overnight.” I can’t help imagining what it would have looked like now if the artists had had their freedom.

 

I ended the day with a loop walk round the beautiful sub-tropical Quarry Gardens, created by volunteers, a few minutes up the road from the Art Centre. It’s home to ‘Te Wai U O Te Atakura’ by Northland artist Chris Booth. The boulder will travel down the pole over the next 70 years or so, as the wood stack rots down; this is one of many stunning environmental works Chris has installed throughout the world. 

At the end of the week, I felt seriously spoilt for having so much material to sketch and the free time to do it. Also knowing that there is a lot more yet to see in NZ's uppermost region.