Painter shows in Wellington

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32562, 23 March 1971, Page 11

Painter shows in Wellington

The painter, Louise Lewis, is the latest Christchurch artist to have a one-man show in Wellington. Her exhibition of paintings and drawings opened at Victoria University yesterday. Mrs Lewis, a painter who has always been shy of publicity, is not as well known in her home city as she should be. She has exhibited rarely here, a few paintings in the Group Show last year having provided one of the few opportunities for Christchurch gallery-goers to see her work. More of her paintings will be on show next month in the exhibition of Canterbury Painters which has been put together by the Robert McDougall Art Gallery, and another will be seen in May in the exhibition of paitings from the Manawatu Prize collection, which is touring the country.

The paintings in ' Mrs Lewis’s Wellington exhibition are all from a series on which she has been working since 1967. Many of them are based on drawings she has done of old people sitting on the riverbank opposite her home in Park Terrace. Six of the paintings were shown last year in an exhibition in the School of Engineering library, but this exhibition was restricted to students. The others have not been shown. In an introduction to her catalogue, Mrs Lewis describes her work as a personal response to people, the land and the environment “I am searching for a means of getting down what I want to say without resorting to the model form or broken colour,” she says. The picture shows Mrs Lewis with two of her paintings.