Sea of Positivity

TWO YEARS IN THE MAKING: Leah McCann with Green Sea Sponge, one of the works in her exhibition, Sea of Positivity. Picture by Liam Clayton

Inspired by the sea, created late at night between children and the demands of a business, scratched and painted on to second-hand timbers, Sea of Positivity is a gorgeous and uplifting exhibition at Tairāwhiti Museum.

Artist Leah McCann took two years to create it, working, as she says, “in that little pocket of time late at night”.

“I do prefer painting in daylight,” she says. “You can see the little flaws, they show up better and it also gets a magical outlook. I use metallic paints and I'm really drawn to golds and coppers.”

They sparkle in this collection, which consists of abstract paintings and 3D wall sculptures. She calls a group of round works “rainbow barnacles”, and the ocean theme flows through them all.

Leah grew up in Gisborne — not by the sea — but she concedes we all really do live by the sea here.

“I got interested in the ocean when I started to snorkel at the marine reserve and then in Fiji,” she says.

“I just have a blank canvas and start painting. I build layers and the painting starts to emerge. It's more intuitive than starting with the end result already in mind.”

She has always painted, but it wasn't until she was pregnant with her second child that she got more serious about it. She picked up a paintbrush then and has painted nearly every day since.

At the opening of Sea of Positivity she was delighted when a friend of her family came who had bought a painting from Leah when she was 15.

“She wrote a cheque for $100. It was the first painting I sold so it was great she was here.”

Leah largely uses recycled wood as her canvas, rather than “canvas”, as such.

“I like the hard texture,” she says, “and some have old glue underneath.”

Because she adds layers of paint, and because of the texture of her substrate to start with, her works have a multi-dimensional feeling. Old glue offers some of the paintings an underlying texture reminiscent of a pressed metal ceiling.

“I'm self-taught and I think I take in influences unknowingly.”

As one of her influences she names Yayoi Kusama, a Japanese contemporary conceptual artist with aspects of surrealism and pop art, influenced by abstract impressionism.

“I love her work,” Leah says.

“What I like is it gives you a feeling I hope my art gives to other people. My works are not a ‘thing', they're almost like a mood. An uplifting, vibrant mood.”

She took two years to complete the exhibition, filling her house with such bright and metallic colours that you can almost hear the sea in them.

“Now they're out of the house the feeling at home has changed. It's very beige at the moment without the mood they created.”

In 2018 Leah contributed a mural to the Sea Walls: Artists for Oceans project, so she has been immersed in the ocean theme for a good while.

“Art for me is like a jump-start that creates a spark of energy. It charges your batteries and reminds us to marvel in the everyday. Each object was once a thought, just like a seed becomes a tree.

Sea of Positivity — A collection of intuitive, abstract paintings and 3D wall sculptures inspired by ocean seascapes. Tairawhiti Museum until July 3.