Doing what comes naturally

By TJ McNAMARA

Artists look at natural subjects and select what they need for their art. No two artists will choose the same things or make their selections in the same way.

Stanley Palmer, at the Anna Bibby Gallery until October 2, takes his landscape subject, the coastline near Karamea, as a whole but he chooses to select certain detail.

Signs of human occupancy are few: isolated power poles, a hint of road, a hut, the red roof of a house. What are emphasised are the tall shapes of nikau palms - the remnant of the original vegetation.

The selected detail combines with the light and glimpses of the sea to convey a feeling of change and times past as well as the physical appearance of the landscape. The level land near the sea is painted in bands with delicate changes in tone.

The hills are steep and strong. Sometimes a road cuts into a bluff just off the level plain. It makes a mark, a scar, but it leads nowhere. This is where roads and society end.

Palmer makes splendid use of the tall, slow-growing nikau. Their placement within the frame gives strength to the composition of the works. The brushwork is smooth, delicate and considered and it unifies the substantial size of these paintings.

The contemplative quality of these works, such as Karamea: afternoon - on the edge, where the work of people runs out and the sea and sky prevail - sometimes gives way to drama when the steep bluffs sweep down to the plain, as in Karamea: Kohaihai Bluff.

These are fine landscapes filled with thought as well as observation, done on a substantial scale, and tinged with melancholy. They are the distilled result of long experience in painting.

April Shin, whose career is just beginning, makes her paintings from details isolated and then assembled into works on separate panels but unified by feeling. Her work is at the Warwick Henderson Gallery until September 26. Making each work from a series of panels in some ways dissipates the energy of her previous show, where the paintings were all of a piece but delicacy and sensitivity to texture and mood made each small panel appealing in itself.

The panels come together best in Form, where they are tall columns. The colour is subdued and shadowy, although here and elsewhere there is telling use of red autumn leaves.

Dancing leaves and solemn images of shadowy trees make the best panels. Certainly that bright red leaf used as a grace-note can pull together into a strong statement the multiple viewpoints and soft hints of growth and pattern in such works as Form of a Tree.

The big paintings by Neil Frazer - which he calls Super Nature - are far brighter in colour and execution. They are at the Milford Galleries until September 25.

Frazer's style involves clotted masses of thick paint which he works and splatters until there is a tumultuous area which suggests sky over a heavy, dark area at the bottom of the painting which has all the density of a forest.

These impressively spectacular paintings are at their best when they are not too specific. Verdant has green foliage in the foreground, dark with branching shapes like pine trees.

It is a pleasant work but not as strong as Vapour, with its great masses of red which swirl and crackle. It is very exciting, not so much because it suggests a forest fire but because it shows the fascinating qualities of paint.

The only drawback in Vapour is that Frazer succumbs to the temptation of using the fashionable running drips of paint which make the viewer instantly aware of the surface where the thick paint has created deep space.

What makes the exhibition so effective as a whole is that each work is individual in colour and texture. Three Blues has deep combing and rhythmic swirls which mirror the turbulent forces of nature yet are very decorative in themselves. Night Bloom is all red and yellow. One canvas is appropriately titled Red, Red, Red.

The most copious selection of individual details is in the work of Kim Meek at the Anna Miles Gallery until October 2. The details in this show are a mixture of natural and artificial objects, not taken directly from nature but scanned from books or photographs. The results are digital prints, and texture is not a consideration.

Exquisitely drawn things ranging from a squid to a cabbage leaf, from buildings to mag wheels, are assembled into unity within a magic circle.

One circle, called Freemans Bay Gran Prix, a reference to the proposed V8 race, brings together lightweight wheels in all their variety, some handbags, and some natural objects. The piece has tree roots as a centre.

Another circular work, called Pugin Asylum, features a neo-Gothic building from Carrington designed in the manner of the English architect Pugin - but its centre is a fossil. Outside the circle, squaring it, are photographs of bare trees, also from Carrington.

These very clever collocations allow the imagination to wander into realms of free association. They hover between graphic design and art. The design element is emphasised more in the smaller works, which contrast geometric shapes with patterns found on material. It makes an intriguing if rather chilly display.