B.
Meeting Douglas MacDiarmid
Behind the scenes
When I visited Paris after the Biennale, I enjoyed a memorable evening with New Zealand painter and long-time Paris resident, Douglas MacDiarmid. The Gallery bought a small work of his from the estate of Albion Wright about a year ago for the Norman Barrett bequest collection. They all knew each other, so it was apt.
Douglas McDiarmid in his Paris appartment
He has fond memories of being in Christchurch and welcomed the chance of reconnecting again. I gave him Peter Simpson's book on Leo Bensemann, which accompanied one of the three exhibitions truncated after only a few days by the February earthquake, and one or two other publications. He was so pleased to be transported, as he put it in a subsequent email, '... back to my youth, on diving into the Bensemann world, its attraction undiminished. ... in those years are my true roots. Christchurch resonates in me regardless of the when & where since.'
I took a picture of him in his apartment, surrounded by his abstract paintings. He loves rugs and certainly doesn't look or seem his age, so life in Paris must be good. For me it was rewarding time with one of the best.
Douglas MacDiarmid Hills From Annat, February 1946. Oil on board. COllection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, N. Barrett Bequest Collection, purchased 2010. Reproduced courtesy of the artist
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Collection
Douglas MacDiarmid Hills from Annat
After a stint at the Wigram Air Force Base in Christchurch with the Royal New Zealand Air Force during World War II, Douglas MacDiarmid found the need to get away to the country for a well-earned sketching holiday. It was here that Hills from Annat was completed. He said of this time:
'I had been able to lay my hands on the last covered wagon in the South Island, also to hire a fine white mare. Off we drove in a flourish then for a month, Blanche, Buddy, me. We were headed for the rolling country where the Canterbury Plains are not yet hills finishing as Alps. At no more than a clip-clop pace it is possible to approach with peaceful observation, meditation merging as no motor vehicle will allow.'