Edith Collier

One of Aotearoa New Zealand's earliest modernist painters, Edith Collier travelled to England in 1913, immersing herself in London’s progressive arts scene. Keen to stay, she reluctantly returned to Whanganui to take up domestic duties on the family farm. She continued to paint, though her family and the public regarded her works with suspicion and hostility. Collier exhibited with the Christchurch Group in the late 1920s and early 1930s, alongside artists such as Evelyn Polson (later Page), Dorothy Richmond and Viola MacMillan Brown. This immersive painting presents a view between the wide trunks of ancient trees, out across a dense tree-fern forest and up to the hills and sky beyond. Walking a skilful line between representation and abstraction, it reveals Collier’s astute understanding of colour and form.

(He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil, 2025)