AMATEUR ARTISTS AT SCHOOL IN CITY

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29102, 14 January 1960, Page 2

AMATEUR ARTISTS AT SCHOOL IN CITY

In a studio off Cashel street last evening 10 women and two men were trying to put a face on paper. It was their first lesson in "life” as the term is used by the artist. And the 12 students—a farmer, farmers’ wives, housewives—were learning to be artists for a number of reasons.

Mrs Eunice Taylor, from Albury, said: “It will be something to do when I get too decrepit to do anything else.” And the same reason was given, in different words, by a Kaikoura farmer, Mr Russell Laidlaw. “My wife told me I’d soon be getting too stiff to play golf,” he said.

Mrs Judith Smith, from Homebush, first wanted to paint when she and her husband lived on the West Coast. “It was rather nice over there,” she said, “So I thought I would catch some Of it.” All three started to paint when Miss Yvonne Rust, now art teacher in a Christchurch secondary school, visited their home towns to teach painting under the Adult Education scheme.

Miss Rust gave up her Adult Education work because she found she could not devote the time to her pupils that she would have liked. So this year, for the second year running, she has arranged a summer painting school in her studio in Cashel street—in the corner of an off-street parking lot between a fur shop and a cafe—and many of her former pupils are coming to her. Altogether, over this week she will have 17 pupils and some of them have come long distances. There are the two Mrs Taylors from Albury, both farmers’ wives. Mrs Marjorie Taylor is president of the Mackenzie Art Group and both she and Mrs Eunice Taylor belong to the South Canterbury Art Society. Both paint because they like it. Like most of the pupils' in the class both have been painting for about three years. And, whatever Mr Laidlaw’s golf was like, over those three years he has developed a distinctive personal style of painting.

Last night, even the model was an amateur, too. She was a friend' of Miss Rust who had come to tea. “We’ve really been having trouble this week,” said Miss Rust. “Our first model got measles. Then our second went off sick, too. Tonight’s couldn’t come. So I dragged my friend in.” Although they were attempting life for the first time, most of the students are already comparatively skilled in landscape, and this week they are getting even more practice—two days at the Blenheim overhead bridge, another two at Lyttelton, a day among the Burwood pines. Their week started on Monday. It finishes on Saturday with a day on Cashmere Hills and an! exhibition of what they have 1 painted during the week. As well. Miss Rust gives them demonstrations and lectures, and hires pictures from the Canterbury Public i Library—Henry Moore, Cezanne. Turner, Gillespie—to give them some understanding of styles, and, more particularly, of modern art.) “They always want to try to I break into that,” she said.