Water-colours being shown at Akaroa

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32553, 12 March 1971, Page 17

Water-colours being shown at Akaroa

The Timaru painter, Rosemary Campbell, is showing 42 water-colour and pastel paintings in a solo exhibition at the Rue Pompallier Gallery in Akaroa.

Rosemary Campbell is undoubtedly 'one of the most consistent younger painters working in New Zealand. She has previously held solo exhibitions in Dunedin, Christchurch, Auckland and Timaru.

Her choice of water-colour as a medium makes her a comparatively rare figure amongst her contemporaries, yet the technique is ideally suited to her individual expressionism. Her colour is often sensual, flowing over soft round forms that in many of her

paintings crystallise into firmer shapes only towards the centre.

Each of her paintings in a sense creates its own reality and, while it is possibly tempting for the viewer to look for associations of landscape in some works at least, this would be to deny the full experience to be gained from the subtle harmonies and order of events she has

arranged. Red, pink and purple are colours that recur throughout her work and occasionally, as in No. 6 and No. 26, for example, their dominance becomes overpowering, but mostly her colour is tightly controlled and any leanings toward excessive warmth are tempered by cool passages of blues and greens. The exhibition will remain open until April 11.—G.T.M.