John Madden

North and South

14 October - 1 November 2008

There is nothing as brutal and beautiful as the west coast” says Karekare-based painter John Madden of the hunkering, weather-blasted landscape that fuels his art.

The work in Madden’s latest show, entitled North and South, pays homage to the muscular hills and surging seascapes of Karekare on Auckland’s west coast, where John Madden has lived and worked for the past 17 years.

Inspiration comes from many hours spent walking the tracks and trails that hug the coast, alone, or in the company of other artists such as painter Richard McWhannell and photographer Chris Hoult.

He studied under renowned landscape painter Toss Woollaston and ceramicist Barry Brickell at Ilam School of Fine Art in Canterbury, before becoming a potter in Nelson. By 1990 he had moved to Karekare where he began taming a section of rugged bush with reverence, patience and bloody minded determination, while with equal energy he began to paint the wild coast between Whatipu and Piha.

 These latest works are full of the sense of space, light, big skies and brooding atmosphere of the landscape he loves. These are mature Madden at the very height of his observational powers.