TALENTED PAINTER

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28973, 14 August 1959, Page 3

TALENTED PAINTER

John Coley’s Exhibition

The first thing that will impress the visitor to John Coley’s exhibition of paintings at Gallery 91 is the large size of several of the works. It is good to see a painter working on a canvas with an area as large as 24 square feet. There are few in New Zealand willing to attempt this. A large surface presents a painter with a greater opportunity to display his merits but at the same time makes much greater demands on him.

It is a measure of Mr Coley’s talent that he is most successful in his larger paintings. “The Cloak” is probably the finest. •It is a very skilful essay in the use of colours which few painters will attempt to use—orange and purple, the warmest and coolest colours. It is also the most strongly-composed painting in the show. Another fine big painting is “Jauchzet Gott in Allen Laden” —a reference to a Bach cantata.

It is in his larger paintings, with their sharply-defined planes, that Mr Coley comes nearest to achieving a personal style. The smaller paintings are in a variety of styles—some of them derivative —ranging from the banal fish shapes in “Aquarium” and the trite “Don Quixote, No. 1” to the witty “Antique Figure” and a series of delightful little gouaches. Nearly all of them show Mr Coley as having gifts as a colourist. He has also a good, unforced feeling for paint. His powers of composition are not quite up to the same level and somp of his works do not transcend the decorative, but the exhibition shows him to be a painter whose development should be worth watching.

It is good to see that his prices are sensible. There is no art market in New Zealand and painters who charge 50 to 100 guineas because they imagine they have a reputation or because they hope a public gallery will buy something not only do themselves a disservice but they prevent their work from going to those who appreciate it but cannot afford high prices. If. as many believe, the aim of painting is communication, it is better for a picture to be looked at by someone who likes it than for it to be lying in a corner of a studio. —J.N.K.