DOMINION ART.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 235, 4 October 1937, Page 13

DOMINION ART.

DEVELOPMENT ENCOURAGED. DISTINCTIVE ATMOSPHERE. (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, Saturday. In opening the annual exhibition of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, in the National Art Gallery, the GovernorGeneral, Lord Galway, said he would like to give a word of encouragement to those artists who were trying to improve their technique, and to those who were putting on canvas the scenery and atmosphere and character of New- Zealand. He also had a word for those who were struggling upward with a desire to exhibit in such a show one day, and said he thought that with earnest study and interchanges of collections with the Commonwealth and the Home country, they would find, as time went on, great changes in art in New Zealand. i The president of the academy, Mr. D. A. Ewen, said the academy endeavoured to encourage the development of art in New Zealand. "We have not as yet in tbis» country travelled far in the direction of developing a typical or distinctive art of our own," he said. "We, nevertheless, do possess an atmosphere and a scenery which I believe to be peculiar to New Zealand, and we all hope that one day some master will arise to do full justice to it. Commendable efforts to portray our bush scenery have been made with success from time to time, and I would like to mention particularly the interesting studies exhibited by Linley Richardson and Olivia Spencer Bower. These are original and vital endeavours to portray something characteristically New Zealand. "In some of the work sent in there appears to be a tendency to imitate unusual representations of ideas which I have been exhibited by overseas artists," Mr. Ewen continued. "This, I think, is a pity. The originator, no doubt, knew what he or she wished to portray and I did achieve a result. Efforts, however, to j reproduce or imitate these methods are japt to fall into the category of plagiarisms and fail in achieving their object."