Peninsula watercolours

Press, 1 December 1987, Page 18

Peninsula watercolours

“Banks Peninsula Watercolours” by David Thomas at the C.S.A. Gallery until December 13. Reviewed by Pat Unger. David Thomas exhibits watercolours and sketches in the Print Room of the C.S.A. Gallery. As a photo engraver, his experience with reproductions of the landscape is evident. He paints areas about the Port Hills, particularly Akaroa and its environs, and he restates many well known art scenes.

Viewers may feel they have walked into a show of traditional New Zealand landscapes which have been given more life

by the use of realistic colours. Yellow ochre and dull green convey the dryness of Canterbury and the East Coast faithfully. The passage of time also seems stilled. Another claim for attention is the similarity of the work to W. A. Sutton’s early landscapes. The bays, hills, valleys, Birdlings Flat and Lake Ellesmere mirror W. A. Sutton’s favoured points of viewing. But after dispensing with first impressions to take a longer look, the moment of truth emerges. Disparities become apparent. The watercolourist’s controlled washes are

there. The play of light and dark, the pleasure of hue and the contrast of edge and blue are also present. Tonalities are generally maintained and nature is again captured and laid out on the picture surface. However, Thomas hasn’t the same grasp of essentials nor the skill of balance and control in every part of his work that W. A. Sutton has. The trivia of nature are sometimes allowed to interfere with artistic statement. They do not justify their presence on compositional grounds and they are a touch overpainted

and dark. A visual sweep round the work comes to rest on these accidental objects. Fences, rocks, tree trunks and cows break the mood. The firmness needed for the ordering .of random objects into strong compositions is occasionally absent. Thomas lets nature have the last say. He wavers in the face of trivia’s pleasing distraction. Where imagery remains underdefined, these landscapes convince. Where they slip into unnecessary explicitness, they run the risk of becoming landscape cliches.