Woollaston:
Paintings and Drawings at the Suter

JOHN CASELBERG

The opening at the new Nelson Suter Art Gallery last November of M. T. Woollaston's latest large-scale exhibition marked an important development in the history of Nelson and of New Zealand art. The 'Austin Davies Collection' of 101 Woollaston drawings and watercolours was displayed for the first time - together with eight major oils that had been made available by Nelson owners and by the Peter McLeavey Gallery. Wellington.

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TOSS WOOLLASTON
Cloud on Hohonu c1960
conté
(Suter Gallery, Nelson)

This exhibition showed the new Suter Gallery functioning admirably. Brilliantly hung, the monumental oils richly populated the capacious centre gallery, while the intimate climate-controlled watercolour-room became vivified by the 101 smaller works. With this wealth of drawing and painting attractively visible, a large attendance of viewers moved easily from a festive dinner, through the galleries, the display foyer and restaurant, on to balcony floors above the adjoining Queen's Gardens' tree-surrounded ponds that reflect light and shadow.

Woollaston's painting itself dances with light, shade and sunlit colour. Chosen by the director of the Gallery, the 'Austin Davies Coilection' covers in time-span, more than forty years of Woollaston's work; and ranges in subject matter from portrait to landscape drawings. On a larger scale, the major oils detail and express an interplay of landforms - mountain ranges, peaks, hills, valleys and plains - with sea-coasts and weather formations typical of Nelson and Wellington provinces.

TOSS WOOLLASTON
Edith 1937
pen drawing
(Suter Gallery, Nelson)

The scope of the exhibition made clear two essential attributes of Woollaston's painting. Picture-making is his first concern - not copying any preconceptions of objects or distortedly-reduced camera views. Each item aims to be a picture in its own right. With line and paint, Woollaston transforms each surface into a work that conveys freshness and space.

Moreover, Woollaston's pictures are characterised by a generous involvement with people and with the landscape they inhabit - a landscape they inevitably alter. His vision corresponds with some deep, affirmatory intimations shared by humanity.

TOSS WOOLLASTON
Riwaka Wharf c1975
oil on canvas
(Suter Gallery, Nelson)

Hence the portraits are never casual. Pictures of acquaintances, friends, members of the Woollaston family and models include 'in-scape' evocations of a celloplayer (Mapua 1939), the painter's wife (1939,1949, and c1977), My Mother in her Last Illness 1945, the New Zealand philosopher Arthur Prior (Greymouth 1958), Harry Tainui (Christchurch 1963) and Chan Woollaston (1967).

Landscapes from Nelson, Takaka, West Coast, Wellington and the painter's boyhood home of Taranaki recur throughout the collection.

As a painter, Woollaston is most strongly stimulated by that which appears before his keenly-observant eyes, and which he then examines over long periods - sometimes of weeks, sometimes of years - analysing visual structure and allowing time for emotional reaction to mature and inner content to develop. Thereafter, using sensitive and masterly gradations of colour and of light and dark, by means of his disciplined style Woollaston re-expresses these subjects so that they can educate the senses and humanise the hearts of those who study and enjoy his work.

TOSS WOOLLASTON
My Mother in her Last Illness 1943
pen drawing
(Suter Gallery, Nelson)

With the new Suter Gallery, the community at Nelson has culturally come of age. In this collection by a painter who for fifty years has been creating local art, Nelson (and New Zealand) presents not imitations of others but aspects of itself.