Karl Maughan, Ashley Clinton, 2022, Oil on canvas 1200mm x 1400mm. Photo by Cheska Brown.
Photo Credit
Exhibition
pagegalleries.co.nzJoin us on Thursday 8 September from 5pm to celebrate the opening of Karl Maughan's latest exhibition.
Karl Maughan takes the garden as his subject matter, deftly capturing the light, colour, texture, and pattern found in nature. Over the last three decades the artist has developed his own distinct visual language, which has in turn taken on a life of its own, shooting and sprouting in different directions. The garden continues to offer both artist and viewer new opportunities for discovery; whether thrust onto thick undergrowth or invited to wander up a well-cut path, we are left marvelling at the vibrancy and immediacy of these botanical creations.
Maughan has long presented a kind of speculative survey of regionalism through his paintings. In this exhibition of recent works Maughan pays particular attention to the geographical area of the Hawkes Bay, with titles including Ashcott, Gwavas, and Ashley Clinton referring to gardens and properties, or recalling those long country roads that run alongside farms and paddocks in the region. Maughan's work prompts us to consider those gardens of early colonial settlers and the romantic but somewhat anachronistic endeavour of establishing traditional English gardens in the Pacific. Yet Maughan's gardens are pure constructions; fanciful imaginings that see the artist cultivating endemic and introduced species side by side in an abundant and idealised amalgam of eternal spring.
Join us on Thursday 8 September from 5pm to celebrate the opening of Karl Maughan's latest exhibition.
Karl Maughan takes the garden as his subject matter, deftly capturing the light, colour, texture, and pattern found in nature. Over the last three decades the artist has developed his own distinct visual language, which has in turn taken on a life of its own, shooting and sprouting in different directions. The garden continues to offer both artist and viewer new opportunities for discovery; whether thrust onto thick undergrowth or invited to wander up a well-cut path, we are left marvelling at the vibrancy and immediacy of these botanical creations.
Maughan has long presented a kind of speculative survey of regionalism through his paintings. In this exhibition of recent works Maughan pays particular attention to the geographical area of the Hawkes Bay, with titles including Ashcott, Gwavas, and Ashley Clinton referring to gardens and properties, or recalling those long country roads that run alongside farms and paddocks in the region. Maughan's work prompts us to consider those gardens of early colonial settlers and the romantic but somewhat anachronistic endeavour of establishing traditional English gardens in the Pacific. Yet Maughan's gardens are pure constructions; fanciful imaginings that see the artist cultivating endemic and introduced species side by side in an abundant and idealised amalgam of eternal spring.
