Power In Paintings

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31763, 21 August 1968, Page 14

Power In Paintings

Frank Davis: One-man show of paintings and fabric prints at Several Arts, 809 Colombo Street; open shopping hours until August 30.

Large, dark, melancholy paintings contrast strongly with effervescent highly coloured printed fabrics by the same artist

The larger divided paintings express a loyalty and love for New Zealand. Here landscape Is charged with compassion and reverence; treated as if it were a beautiful, vulnerable body. But this is a body not merely scarred but slashed and still bleeding from open wounds. The cry of anguish assumes different form in “Mangaweka Landscapes” reproduced above, for in this painting the vertical divisions separate three moods and, unless I am mistaken, three periods of New Zealand’s history. The right hand panel is fresh and rhapsodic, the centre bloody and the third reminds one of a landscape sore and bruised but unbowed. The idea of divided paintings is an interesting and intelligent development Structurally it provides ready analogies to music and poetry, but equally important it meets the difficulties encountered in handling and transporting very large pictures. I feel the term, “triptych,” used to describe these works in the catalogue, is not the most appropriate one. The printed fabrics (dress lengths, handbags, ponchos, and other garments) range from bold to crude and from gay to lurid: some seem incredibly unsubtle and would soon bore me. But I must admit there is an awful lot of grey in our surroundings and lives: these fabrics could help brighten both. Frank Davis was born at Petone in 1934, reacted against art school, worked as a bushman and scrub-cutter; he started painting again in 1962 and is now head of the art department of Palmerston North Teachers’ College. This is one exhibition where a catalogue will inform rather than mystify; for once the titles of paintings are important A day or so ago, a reader of “The Press” took me to task over something I had written, his letter also contained the following passage: “I feel that few artists, and this applies to beginners as well as the more advanced, get down into the guts of this country and its people. It is not an easy thing to do. Many have tried but few succeed.” Frank Davis has been “down into the guts of this country.” May he join the elect of those who have succeeded. —H.J.S.