Seeing the beauty

Press, 15 August 1984, Page 21

Seeing the beauty

The Windsor Gallery in High Street has extended its premises. The gallery now includes three former shops in the block. To mark the opening of the gallery extensions an exhibition of three Christchurch painters will run from today until August 31. They are Co Jansen, Brent Trolle and Graham Taylor. KAY FORRESTER spoke to Co Jansen about his painting.

Co Jansen is a painter of the old school — and proud of it.

The Dutch painter, 73 this year, and now a naturalised New Zealander learnt his art in the Netherlands and worked as a professional painter in that country before emigrating to New Zealand in 1950. Although he had to adapt his style of painting when he started painting in the brighter colours of New Zealand, Mr Jansen still paints in his traditional style. “I suppose in one sense you could call me a square,” he says. He learnt the rudiments of planting at an artist’s studio, where he worked on Saturday afternoons. “I went to an exhibition when I was about 22 and I thought I could do this. That is how I began painting,” Mr Jansen says. He picked up his knowledge of painting just by being around the studio and “then I started on the slippery road.” As a full-time painter during the years of the Second World War life was not easy. “I lived in the south part of the Netherlands in the country during the war. Afterwards I had to start again. My house had been destroyed,” he says. His 10 years as an artist in the Netherlands brought him recognition for his still life works and his paintings hang in the Government buildings and private collections of that country. When he emigrated to in New Zealand in 1950, Co Jansen was able to bring only a few of his paintings with him. The others had to be sold to pay for the journey of his family to their new home. Arriving here "without anything," Mr Jansen could not afford to follow a fulltime career as a painter. He worked as a house painter before getting a job in time and motion study. “I kept painting to keep my touch but it was difficult. A painting would get started but when I got back to it two or three weeks later, I had a different image in my mind,” Mr Jansen says. Used to the emphasis of tones in the Netherlands, it took the painter some time to adjust to the bright, light colours of New Zealand. “I could not pick up a brush for two years. After having.painted in the deep tone of the Netherlands I had to change. Not just the

mixing of the paints but also my attitude. “That is why, even now, I paint New Zealand landscapes toned down. I tend to paint them dramatically," he says. During his working life in New Zealand painting was relegated to a spare time occupation. It was only when Mr Jansen retired that he returned to painting full-time. For the last seven years he has concentrated on his painting again,.

The only still life painter in the South Island, Mr Jansen is best known for that sort of painting. Setting up a still life scene can take four or five hours — “just shifting this a little and that a little to get that perfect shape.” His still lifes are painted on a background of decaying wood. For the painter the wood symbolises loss of rules and morals in society.

“It is a reflection of the growing anarchism and lawlessness. People today look at an exhibition and say it’s no good, there is nothing new. That is not right. You cannot just throw everything out, not after years of civilisation.

“You cannot have something new all the time. You have to build op. what is already there,” Mr Jansen

says. His subjects he draws from everyday objects. “I like to paint ordinary things, old books, shoes, old jeans. I like to imagine what someone might have been thinking when they read a book.

“You see, there is a beauty in everyday things but often people do not have the time to see that. New Zealand life is an outdoor life. In the Netherlands, because of the bad weather, more time is spent inside and you see these things.” The still life technique and the traditions of painting Mr Jansen is passing on to five or six pupils he teaches once a week.

“There is only a, small group because that way I can attend to each one individually.”

The classes have been held at Mr Jansen’s studio in a neighbour’s garage. A new studio on the fainter’s own section will be uilt soon.

As well as painting still life, Mr Jansen also paints landscapes and portraits. There are no portraits in his exhibition because he usually paints these on commission and “they take a long time.”

Mr Jansen's last exhibition was at the Nova Gallery in 1978. It is the only exhibition he has had in New Zealand.