Penny Otto

"In the 1940’s at Ilam Art School, Lecturer Rudolf Gopaz put me on track to explore the European Expressionists. Overseas travel was to prove an enrichment of this. At the beginning we all worked with oil paints but when I returned from my first overseas trip, I was told that “Everybody is using acrylics now.” It took me ten years to readjust! As students we had been discouraged from using white or black paint. I thoroughly enjoyed finding substitutes, especially  yellow, the colour of the sun.

Growing up on a farm has made me sensitive to nature in all its forms. “I wander thro’ each charter’d street,” comes from the pen of the visionary poet and artist William Blake. It often runs through my head when I am away from my lovely Glendowie garden. I need water for my painting, for the garden too, and I am happiest when I can see our estuary in the morning."

As a collective we have worked together for several years and each time it becomes a deeper experience. The given title Pūmanawa/Ituitio explores an area of challenging individual experience for each one of us. 

There are three “nearby” volcanoes in Glendowie where I live, and the largest is Maungarei or Mt Wellington. A thousand years ago a fortified pa stood on the summit which provided a clear view of the Tamaki River and particularly of enemy waka approaching. Now other settlements are positioned around its base so when I am shopping around there I often marvel at our local history.