Don Peebles: Recent Work

This exhibition is now closed

From June 6 to June 29 Don Peebles will show a collection of recent works. Canvas reliefs, executed in acrylic paint and charcoal on unstretched canvas these powerful pieces are the most recent products of one of New Zealand's most consistent and hardworking painters.

'Paint to Don Peebles is a dynamic process wrote Michael Thomas recently 'his work is in a continual state of evolution, and art to him is not the process of realising a preconceived idea or the carrying out of a plan, but is a venture in which the final form is unknown.

His working method is to make highly considered decisions which make the most of each situation, haphazard or random way. Each additional line or tone – however small or subtle – is a vital element which must be perfectly balanced with all the other elements within the work. Three months might elapse before a hue or an angle is altered. A piece might be exhibited then be later rejected or even become part of a larger work; there is nothing static about his art which is continually being re-processed. Don Peebles admits to having to resist the desire to take his paintings or constructions off gallery walls in order to alter them! A piece is never actually finished he says 'it reaches a juncture when I can accept it'.

Peebles' paintings are not consciously concerned with meanings, symbols or emotive feelings; there is no deliberate reference in them to anything outside the work. It is the unity of the 'concrete', tangible elements; form, texture, line, tone, colour, which is the 'raison d'etre' of his art'.

('Don Peebles: Recent Works', Bulletin, No.3, May/June, p.5)