Art

Symmetry and Empathy

Jan Walker

Miss Joan Fanning who at present is holding an exhibition of drawings and paintings at the Bett-Duncan Gallery, Cuba Street, has had great experience in her particular field of figure drawing and is an accomplished artist.

She is a graduate of Slade School of Art, University College, London, and worked for some years as Education Officer at the National Art Gallery in Wellington. She is at present devoting all time to her drawing and the professional ease and masterly strokes of her pen amply justify this move.

This present exhibition is a project by the artist to explore the mother/child relationship from the pre-birth stages and continues with the growth and development of the child. On the whole her paintings are rather unrewarding with the exception of a very fine portrait titled 'Seated Woman'. This alone dwells on the intelligence and exceptional beauty of the model and is a most arresting, clean and forthright piece of work. Of the other paintings 'Mother Bathing Child' with its post-impressionist arrangement of proportion and space shows the nearest the artist comes to forgetting her natural interest to detail and giving the models, more especially the woman, an independent life force.

Miss Fanning's swift pen and wash sketches are her real forte however. Her clean, sure strokes catch the spontaneity and movement of the growing child and the added maturity and softness of the mother. The mother is leaning towards, over, attending to the child and the baby (later the child) moves with the moods of the mother for example the drawing entitled 'The Picture Book'. In the later drawings the child is independently beginning to move away for the Security of her mother and this two Miss Fanning has illustrated in a series of lively sketches.

The tone of Miss Fanning's work is harmonious and low-key. Many of her sketches have a momentary interest and a few a lasting graceful quality. Miss Fanning is an artist with sympathy and a capacity to crystalise fragments of delicate expression. This exhibition will continue until April 18th.

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At the Rothman Cultural Foundation at the N.Z. Display Centre from the 31st March until the 11th April was an exhibition of storeware pottery by Mirek Smisek. This well-known New Zealand potter is one of a small number of beautiful potters whose work is always of a high quality and a pleasure to view or use. The potter must essentially be a sensualist and Smisek continually emphasises the lover's sure touch and appreciation of form in the harmony of his work.

He uses natural mineral and rock glazes particularly ash and felspar which gives his potery and irridescent lighness and fluid solidarity. In the nearly two hundred exhibits the emphasis was on utility and simplicity; bowls, mugs, platters, jugs—all within a reasonable price range.

Mirek Smisek, a Czechoslovakian who did not begin serious potting until after his arrival in New Zealand has since become one of the foremost in his art. He has worked with Bernard Leech in England and Hamada in Japan, but his style and his style and his adaption to New Zealand, particularly Nelson clays and glaze materials, is his own. His skill as a thrower is always evident and his progress is evolutionary, never at the expense of craftsmanship.

There is a depth and fecundity about Mirek Smisek's work which leaves little need for ornamentation. For the most part he relies on contrasting glazes or simple motifs to offset the basic earth colours, and spread melting larva over the contours of his work. The continual high quality and assurance in his work make Mirek Smisek one of the masters of his profession.

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An exhibition of paintings by Michael Smither opens at Peter McLeavey's Cuba Street Gallery, 16 April. Michael Smither is one of the better known younger painters whose work is represented in several private collections and a number of New Zealand and Australian Art Galleries. He recently won the H. C. Richards Memorial Prize, an Australian art award of $1000. An exhibition of the paintings of Pamela Searell is being held at Rothman's Cultural Foundation for the next few weeks.