Gregory O'Brien told a Whanganui audience some behind-the-scenes stories about his friend and fellow artist Euan Mcleod on Saturday.
His talk was about the Sarjeant on the Quay exhibition Euan Mcleod: Painter. Nearly 30 came to hear it, curator Greg Donson said.
O'Brien and Mcleod are friends who have travelled together and exhibited together in Wellington. O'Brien even features as a model in some of Mcleod's paintings.
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Mcleod's show has been popular in Whanganui. People are enjoying an exhibition that is solely painting, Mr Donson said. The paintings are set in Australia, Antarctica and New Zealand. There's even one of the artist painting a New Zealand landscape on an easel propped up in Australia's red desert.
Mcleod was born in Christchurch in 1956 and went to Australia in the 1980s. He now lives in Sydney, but New Zealand is clearly still on his mind.
There is landscape in his paintings, but they also have portraits and male figures.
"They could be termed a bit grim. But there's light in them. People are being attracted, but at the same time slightly perturbed," Mr Donson said.