B.

Tony Fomison was born in 1939, in North Canterbury, and remembers he spent his early childhood scribbling battle scenes of how he would win the war. For his efforts his father returned from active duty with a large black box full of paints.

Towards the end of his secondary schooling in Christchurch, Fomison became involved with the late Dr Roger Duff in the excavation of a cave used by Maoris in Redcliffs, which eventually directed him to study sculpture as a means of discovering more about primitive cultures intending to pursue a career in Ethnology. However he eventually left the Canterbury Museum and after a short period of devoting himself to painting received an Arts Advisory Council travel grant which took him off to London. England and Europe gave Fomison the opportunity to study paintings previously known only via reproductions. Concentrating on drawing he copied early Picasso's and School of Pairs works.

Following his 1967 return to Christchurch, Fomison devoted his time to painting, primarily in black and white, showing forms and contours by careful modelling, preferring subjects which gave a chance for concentrated forms such as photographs of aged or grotesque faces, and frequent use of book illustration of skin diseases.

After several years of nomadic life around Christchurch, and his first large paintings of reaching, searching, black on black background hands, Fomison moved to Auckland where he discovered the wealth of Polynesian culture with which he had been intimately involved in his early years.

The author of the catalogue which accompanies this exhibition explains how the Auckland environment changed the subject of Fomison's painting, to images which emerge directly from his own imagination, becoming images of guests and the handing on of secrets.

In Spite of the complex imagery of his paintings Fomison is conscious that his works must be able to reach a general audience – 'I'm painting things that relate to everybody – that are important . . . Painting is not the most widespread or well placed of the visual arts. It's got overwhelming competition from photography, cinema, and advertising. But it is the meditative visual art; and to get a person to look for more than five minutes at a painting, that's what it's all about.'

('Tony Fomison: A Survey of His Painting and Drawing 1961-79', Bulletin, No.11, September/October 1980, p.4)