The galleries: Paint helps us learn as we look

Light is a feature in Jude Rae’s Nada. Picture / Carolyn Robertson

Good painting can resolve many artistic issues, such as: How can a pale, abstract surface without any imagery be interesting? How can a portrait head impress a viewer who has no biographical knowledge of the sitter? Two exhibitions this week show how.

Geoff Thornley's exhibition at the Vavasour Godkin Gallery until June 18 is an extreme example of abstract art.

There is a sense of shock when you enter the gallery and are confronted by four very large paintings which have what at first seem to be plain, off-white surfaces. The show is called Listening to Sight. The paradox of the title is resolved when the viewer stands in front of the painting looking hard but waiting as if to hear something.

As you look you are aware that the surface is delicately translucent and behind the white are hints of underlying colours. Shades of red and blue under the surface are not immediately apparent but come into view with contemplation. Vision is slowed. Time is important.

The subtle underpainting is always under control. A suggestion of wave movement is behind the painting and a distant hint of the grid patterns that often preoccupy Thornley. This richly contemplative and still quality is the result of long experience in using paint.

Discovering the qualities of Thornley's work is possible only by looking at it intently. Part of the process is revealed by the narrow borders that frame the paintings, where the underlying colours bleed out just enough to reveal how the interior colour is achieved and to give conclusion to each work.

It would be possible to read metaphor into these paintings but it is better to surrender to an exquisite visual experience that is delicate but on an exceptionally large scale.

The sensations offered by these paintings would be impossible to achieve except in paint. As with many fine paintings, no shiny photograph could possibly do justice to the lovely surfaces and the nuances of colour underneath.

This kind of painting exists in the rarified air of the high pinnacles of abstract art. Up there the air is thin. There is little of the breath of the life in the rough lowlands about it, but the view - like light on snow - is impressive.

At the Jensen Gallery in Upper Queen St until the end of this month is an exhibition by the realist painter Jude Rae. She has long established herself as an artist who paints exquisite still-lifes of bottles, bowls and such colourful things as fire-extinguishers and gas bottles.

In this exhibition she paints portraits. Three are big paintings that show seated figures in interior settings, and the rest are of heads.

The "interior" concept looms large. The seated figures are in rooms lit from a window. Tables support still-lifes of books, overhead projectors and, in one case, a beautifully painted porcelain bowl. These are interiors in the literal sense of the word.

The portrait heads all have their eyes closed - those portrayed have all retreated into thought. Because their eyes are closed they become objects to be modelled in paint in the same way as the painter might use a vase.

What is fascinating is the subtlety of the painting that achieves this modelling.

If they make no eye contact and we do not know these people, why should they assert the fascination they do? It is because of the way they are painted with a deftness of touch that allies strength to real monumentality and impressive colour. The paint in these works is mesmerising.

In such a painting as Interior (Caitlin), the head with its close-cropped hair and dimpled chin is so carefully modelled that it is as solid as anything from the High Renaissance.

It has the blockiness of stone but the delicate shifts of colour make it convincing flesh with bone under.

The links to tradition are clear everywhere throughout the show. The heads such as Caitlin or the impressive Derek may recall the Renaissance, but the interiors are reminiscent of later painters, particularly Vermeer.

The subtle play of light across a wall as well as a quiet stillness are features of Vermeer.

The subjects of the paintings are people but the underlying theme is the way all things are revealed by light. They are about the nature of looking and perception.

In Nada, one of Rae's large interiors, the light falls equally on a porcelain bowl on a table, the bony profile of Nada herself, her strong arms, and the wall behind her. The skilfully applied paint reinforces our delight in seeing and it makes what we see still and lasting.

It is interesting to see that in the three big paintings, the areas at the bottom of the canvas, where the legs of chairs and the drapes on the tables meet the floor, are the least convincing areas. Without the light, the composition and the stillness dissolve.

In a quite different way paint is the essence that livens up the little sculptures carved in oak by Harry Watson on show at the FhE G2 Gallery this month.

The show, called Shelf Life, is a series of little figures all sitting in a box on a shelf on the wall.

The dolls look like craft work but they are much more. They are deft and amusing characterisations of people, often from New Zealand history, and the neat carving is enlivened and given extra point by the paint.

Edward Gibbon Wakefield, buttoned up to the neck and with his hand on the gilded frame of his portrait or unreliable translator, Henry Williams, have an added irony from their painted surrounds.

These lively works are that unusual thing in art - very funny.