Shona McFarlane art exhibition

Press, 28 November 1979, Page 7

Shona McFarlane art exhibition

Shona McFarlane retrospective exhibition, C. S. A. Gallery (until December 4). Reviewed by Michael Thomas. Fruit, vegetables, people and towns are painted

with a direct and straightforward style by Shona McFarlane in her retrospective exhibition of paintings and drawings at the C.S.A. Gallery. It covers 30 years of artistic development. It is the subjects themselves rather than any particular technique which remain in the mind. The artist seems to convey a delight in the simple beauty of ordinary things such as a cabbage, a child’s tricycle or an assortment of kjtchen utensils. Several watercolours of buildings, town and rural scenes are shown in the Front Gallery, but these are less individual than some of the later and larger oils on display upstairs. People are a favourite subject at all stages of the artist’s career. An early watercolour of Rudolf Gopas, the highly influential Canterbury artist and teacher who taught Shona McFarlane in her early years, is a competent study of a head. But the candid “man in a Bean Bag,” which shows her husband, Allan Highet,

asleep on a pebble beach, is far more exciting as a portrait and is the most eye-catching painting in the show. The exhibition as a whole is of mixed quality, and there seems little continuity of development throughout the display. In some paintings. “Sisters and Saki” for instance, too many colours are used and the brushstrokes are fussy resulting in almost sentimental painting. This contrasts with the later, more simply rendered, realist still fifes such as “Stones in My Step” in which the objects are allowed to speak for themselves without exaggerated colours or stylistic embellishments. Shona McFarlane is well known as a writer, broadcaster and television personality as well as a painter. She has exhibited mainly in her hometown, Dunedin. Her work is represented in many public art galleries, and this retrospective exhibition has been organised by the Dunedin City Art Gallery to give the public in other centres an over-all view of her versatility and talent.