Parnell Gallery warmly invites you to join Matt Payne and the Parnell Gallery team in celebrating the opening of Paynes’s exhibition of new paintings.

Please email art@parnellgallery.co.nz to confirm your space (walk in’s are welcome on the evening).

Parnell Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Matt Payne.

Matt Payne is a contemporary landscape painter who specialises in capturing the New Zealand coastline with breathtaking realism.

“The aim for me is to capture the essence of what it is I’m painting. It can be an emotion, a feeling, or a mood. I am fascinated by how an image is just tiny bits of colour joined or linked together like some sort of code. I love to explore the relationships between colour, light, and form and how these elements are seen by the eye when they are put together.”

Payne directs our attention to the delicate features of our vast and varied coastlines, emphasising the elements to bring those details to the forefront of our minds. His glistening seas and pristine sands are rendered with astonishing accuracy. Not merely imitating nature, Payne’s painterly fragments coalesce to form representations of particular moments in time, evoking the mystery of the natural world. Working in acrylic on canvas, the large scale of Payne’s paintings provides a deep sense that we might simply walk right into his chosen scene, with the water lapping at our feet.