These archival drawings, notebooks and photographs from the E H McCormick Research Library offer rich insights into the remarkable lives and creative journeys of June Black and May Smith. Both were pioneering modern artists whose varied artistic practices are visible in the exhibition Modern Women: Flight of Time.

A painter, printmaker, sculptor and writer, June Black (1910–2009) exhibited nationally and internationally, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s. She used clay as a sculptural medium when domestic pottery was the norm for ceramic artists and built across different media a parallel world of eccentric characters who journey through the mind. A feminist ahead of her time, Black’s ‘sausage book’ journals and other archival material map her seemingly limitless creative vision and vivid emotional life.

Born in Simla, India, May Smith (1906–1988) started making art in her teens and forged a career working across various media, including painting, printmaking, textile design and public murals. She attended Auckland’s Elam School of Art and Design in the 1920s and London’s Royal College of Art in 1928. Returning to Aotearoa New Zealand in 1939, she went on to paint one of the definitive images of a modern woman, representing poet and broadcaster Marie Conlan in the unforgettable Characterisation in Colour, 1941.

While Black and Smith’s art practices may initially appear dissimilar, their substantial archives reveal connections in their research and thought processes, including their preparatory working methods. Their determination and untethered creativity, which radiates from their art and writing, is clear.