Streams of Colour
Barbara Clegg opens her door and colour streams out behind her. The furnishings of her house seem predominantly blue, which might - or might not - be imagined.
Taranaki Artist Barbara Clegg sees creative colours everywhere. "Because I paint landscapes, there's always the land, the sea and the sky. And I love to paint the movement of the sea so there's always going to be blues and greens. But I like to bring other unexpected colours in, too."
Her initiation into painting began when her son, Craig, an artist in his own right, left his paints behind after a visit. As a child Barbara could draw well with a pencil on paper, but with a wet afternoon ahead of her she picked up a brush. What she discovered was her own art.
"I found I like the actual act of painting. The research. The brushes. The process. I like it all." And so began her own journey, which has led her deep into the New Zealand landscape where she still wanders. When she took her first few canvases down to a local gallery, ("I think I was hoping for a critique") she was promptly invited to join an art group which became Sequioa 8 and which had George Boys as its mentor.
Being exposed to the art of others, she says, means you learn how it works, why it works, what is successful and what is not. "I loved that artistic prod we got each week," Barbara says. "Aside from the welcome, arty conversations, and the lingering suppers, we were told to go away and paint."
"I'd come home from Tuesday Art Group and paint something that tried to display what I'd learnt and on Wednesday morning I would not want to go to my nine to five job."
She discovered inspiration flowed best if she set the scene. " I have to know there's at least two or three uninterrupted hours. I like to have music on that isn't in the English language so I'm not listening to words. I let the music wash over me. I let the phone go to answerphone. And once I get started, it's like I keep getting dragged back and back by the painting itself."
She produced a first series, Driftwood, painted in Payne's Gray, which she varied by watering it down or adding white. "I had driftwood stacked up all round the house. There a still a few favourite bits left," she admits. She experimented with other subjects and added colour, and during the art group's first exhibition she sold not only those paintings that were hung on the wall, but paintings loaded in the boot of her car.
It was at that exhibition Barbara says, that she 'came out' as a painter. And though she has it in mind to one day revisit her driftwood and paint it the with skills she's acquired since, it's landscapes that capture her passion and talent now. "Yes," she smiles, " at the moment it's all landscapes. I've learned that with colour you can make things recede or advance, add depth.. and that by using these devices, you get to where you can almost put your hand into a painting - you can lead the eye and take it up, simply by the use of colours."
Barbara says she quickly saw how a little strip of red peeping out from pressure points created within a convoluted landscape made the painting more dynamic. Today, those little slivers have grown into winding ribbons and thick streamers of varying width and hue that make a Clegg painting unique. And patrons are often unaware of the depth of knowledge within her work, which she attributes to growing up along the Taranaki coast.
"We were seeing things that I can now translate on to paper," she explains. "Just watching the tide go in and out and the movement on the sand. The waves crashing into the river mouth. How the convergence of water and the movement of the sea are never still....." Her eyes take on distant look. She's standing on a familiar beach, Timaru Road, 30 minutes from New Plymouth, where she sat in the sand for hours as a child, watching as her father fished. "I can paint these into currents. I can actually base my art on something that is real.
Even when I look at a picture in a book and think 'that's a lovely image' - the picture might just be blue - I can put in those currents, show where the pressure will be on the waves on the headlands, and how the waves arrive as sets on the shore. I have an inherent understanding of these things because of time spent at the beach."
Because of fortunate geography, local and national, Barbara is never short of subjects to paint. "We trot out often what a wonderful place New Zealand is to live in and I like to think my paintings celebrate that," she says, coming back to her lounge room, shaking images of the beach away. And while she welcomes commissions, she would hate to be just sent a postcard to copy.
"I would need a dialogue with the person. I'd want to know what connects them to this particular place. All traces of human impact are removed...no houses, bridges, fences etc. I strip it to just the land. Then I would start putting the emotional connection in. It's got to be more than they expect."
"If you want an image of something real on your wall, go take a photo, " she smiles.
Barbara strives to find that place that puts her paintings beyond realism, that makes them an expression of herself. Like many successful artists, her favourite painting is the one she is currently working on. Lately, she has been thinking of adding a provenance to each canvas.
"I carry the story of my paintings around with me...the research, the colour selections....trouble is, each image's 'story' fades quite quickly in my mind - even as I'm finishing a painting, another is tapping me on the shoulder going paint me, paint me - so it would be good to record what was involved in getting the painting to this point."
In 2008, Barbara embraced the chance to live for a year in artistic solitude, in a hexagonal house tucked into the skirts of Mt Taranaki, where, despite often having no power or running water, she found even the shape of the building uplifting. 'It was an incredibly creative space, an eco house. There was no turning on the telly. I stepped out the door and found a landscape that inspired me every day. I'd walk to the corner of the lawn and look directly up to the mountain. I was actually living on a landscape that formerly I had just looked at.
The result was larger images. "I started painting even bigger while I was there. Bigger, bigger art, to the point that when I was asked by someone to paint something smaller I really struggled to do it. Now I am not sure I would want to compromise my development as an image maker. She recalls a painting which went to an aerial photography company...one of her first sales.
She also remembers delivering her image Turangawaewae - a place to stand - which won the Rural Section of the 2006 Taranaki Art Awards. It was one of a few of my paintings I have actually seen hung. This in itself is a great thing - to know where your painting lives. "I've sent pieces overseas and around New Zealand, and I'd love to see the walls they're hanging on," Clegg says. "It's often difficult to let art go. Rather like sending children out into the world."
She lives for the day when she opens a book or a magazine and finds a photograph of one of her canvases within its pages. "Every painting has a moment of magic in it. Every painting I do has that moment when my heart beats a little faster, my pulse races, and I've thought, 'Oh my god, that really works!"
"Come on, I'll show you Cape Kidnappers," she says, leading the way towards a stunning, as yet unfinished canvas. "I like people to come to my paintings from the front," she laughs. "Full frontal art."
Barbara Clegg
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