Trusttum’s drawings

Press, 15 August 1984, Page 31

Trusttum’s drawings

Drawings by Philip Trustturn at the Gingko Gallery, until August 30. Reviewed by John Hurrell. This collection of 30 of Philip Trusttum’s drawings, done over several years, is on display in the Gingko, after having a short tour round the North Island. All the works have been done in pencil, except for two done with brush and ink. They are comparatively small in size for Philip Trusttum, and slightly monotonous as a group, though a large percentage showing the influence of Paul Klee. Depicting domestic and occasionally rural scenes, featuring members of the artist’s immediate family and objects such as sewing

machines or radios, they are executed on a wide range of paper types. Because Philip Trusttum’s paintings and drawings are the by-product of a lifestyle totally committed to ceaseless experimentation and intuitive decision making, he tends not to select the best works but rather exhibit the lot This gives a hit-and-miss quality to his work, showing his weaknesses as well as his strengths.

An exhibition such as this one demonstrates his willingness to investigate different drawing styles, but it also reveals his great debt to modern masters such as Klee, when he goes through an “apprenticeship” of mim-

icking their methods of working.

While his paintings often transcend his eclecticism by virtue of their scale and unusual methods of colour application, in the drawings the result is usually too imitative to be regarded as Philip Trusttum’s own voice. They show something that may have been a process which the artist needed to work through to develop his paintings, but as artworks themselves, they are often ineffective. Even though many of these works are inventive, and contain wit and spontaneity, the elements of hero worship that they reveal place serious limitations on their worth.