Frizzell Comes to Town

Other highlight of the week in Wangas was the visit of artist Dick Frizzell, promoting his new book, "Its All About the Image", with a lecture at Alexander Library.
Was fortunate a year or two back, to be invited to make up numbers for an art weekend at Pukeora Estate, Waipukurau, where 10, mainly rural gents, completely unschooled in the finer points of painting, were delivered to the care and tutelage of Dick, to have us create an art work before the weekend was through. This, all part of the Arts Channel series, "Artland NZ", where several artists were commissioned to "do their thing" for an episode each.
Self dubbed the "Pukeora Picasso's", it was rather fortuitous that Pukeora Estate is now a winery, and all being rural blokes with a dab hand at knocking up a feed, we each contributed to the food basket, to round out a great weekend, and learn a new hobby.
While we'd all freely admit the non-likelihood of any of our works getting into the National Gallery, we were all immensely surprised at what we achieved with a bit of solid tuition, and simple pointers on how colour might be mixed and moved around a canvas.
What I learned was never to be intimidated by any work of art just because one might not feel in the same class, it is really, all about the image, and what the individual perceives as important, as, after all, all art, whether painting, verse, prose, or movie, is a political statement.
Dick has quite an irrepressable mischief, albeit good mannered, about his journey along his road of appreciation and learning, and I was fortunate to have been levered into it his way.
This is a great read if you want to know how to appreciate art, as a racehorse breeder, there are similarities.

My first go at painting a picture