Mt Eden with Blue Car - George Baloghy

George Baloghy is an established New Zealand and Australasian painter artist. His current painting style can be described as realism, although it is a particular kind of realism, hardened and sharpened to be something more dramatic. By heightening colour and contrast he creates a reality not quite like the world that we see, but a kind of hyper-realism. He deals with a number of different themes, and these threads have intertwined over the years of his painting production. There are city landscapes, rural and coastal scenes, appropriated imagery from other artists, often with humour. They are more than paintings, they are also commentaries on how we see, and often with a subtle twist. As such there is generally more to the paintings than meets the eye, depending on your knowledge of art history and sometimes local events. His work is included in the curricula of University Art History Programmes, and he has work in almost all the major public Art museums in New Zealand. George Baloghy has worked professionally as an artist since 1993. - reference georgebaloghy.com Oct 2010.

Buying Committee - Glen, Kate, Karina

Purchased in Oct 2010

Rock Pool Study - Michael Smither

Michael Duncan Smither, CNZM (29 October 1939) is a New Zealand painter and composer.
He was born in New Plymouth and was educated at New Plymouth Boys' High School and Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland. While studying he worked part-time in a car spray-paint shop, an occupation which introduced Smither to the use of lacquer-based paints.
In 1959, Smither returned to New Plymouth, working part-time in arts-related jobs. His first solo exhibition was in 1961. In 1963 he married Elizabeth Harrington, who is better known as New Zealand Poet Elizabeth Smither. The two have three children, Sarah, Thomas and Joseph. Smither separated from Elizabeth and eventually divorced. For a few years he was married to Rachel McAlpine, a writer. Smither now lives at Otama beach on the Coromandel Peninsula.

Smither works in a variety of media - notably oils, acrylics, and screenprint - and on a variety of subjects. Domestic life is a major theme of many of his works, these scenes depicted with a rigorous yet idiosyncratic realism. A similar style is brought to his landscapes, many of which depict the Taranaki landscape around which he grew up. At least two of his paintings, The Family in the Van and Rocks with Mountain have attained the status of iconic paintings in New Zealand.
His first solo exhibition was in 1961.

Smither was the recipient of the 1970 Frances Hodgkins Fellowship from the University of Otago. He is the patron of community art gallery "Real Tart" in New Plymouth.

Buying Committee - Glen, Kate, Karina

Purchased in Sept 2010

On Waking Up & Getting Ready For Work - Jenny Dolezel

Born and based in Auckland, Dolezel is expert in drawing and printmaking as well as painting. 'Aggressive, nightmarish, off-beat, scary' these are the adjectives Dolezel applies to her work.

Born into an artistic background in 1964, Dolezel graduated from Auckland's Elam School of Fine Arts in 1987 with a major in printmaking, having also studied painting and drawing.
She is the recipient of 18 major art awards; including the James Wallace Art Award 1996 and the Royal Overseas League Art Award in London. In 2006 Jenny won 1st prize in the Parklane Art Awards judged by Peter Siddell. Jenny also won 1st prize in the BMW Art Awards judged by James Wallace. Dolezel has taken part in several artist residency programs including the Fresno Art Museum in California, and the Goethe Institute Scholarship in Berlin. Jenny Dolezel has taken part in numerous solo and group shows, and is displayed in many public and private collections. Jenny currently lives and works in Auckland New Zealand.Public art commissions of Jenny's work include a mural at Skycity, Auckland; a mural at the Aotea Centre, Auckland and a mural at the Boathouse on Blackwattle Bay, Sydney, Australia.

Buying Committee - Glen, Kate, Karina

Purchased Sept 2010

Jean Cocteau - Gavin Hurley

Collage techniques of cut-and-paste are integral to Hurley’s work. Collecting textures and papers from old books and second-hand haunts, his portraits have a genteel, even antique, decorum and a childlike naivety. Not portraits in the usual sense, of accurately representing a person, his works are a carefully neutral approximation, given individual personality with a set of clip-art style accoutrements, or in the particular placement of a lock of hair. Even when working with paint on canvas, rather than with paper, Hurley’s collage approach is visible in the curious accessories around his sitters.

The flat, matte areas of colour also reveal the way that Hurley's images are built of flat plans, carefully layered. With a nod to early cubist painter he contrasts those flat areas with carefully, almost mechanically shaded ares, which give an illusion of depth. The archival nature of Hurley's work is reflected not just in his choice of second-hand materials and motifs, but also in his subject matter. Invariably working with historical subjects Hurley's work is laced with a coded nostalgia, where history is reconstructed from fragments and left over relics.- Hanna Scott

Buying Committee - Glen, Kate, Karina

Purchased Sept 2010