The galleries: Life with a lot of bottle

By T.J. McNAMARA

This is a week of the cool and the indefinable. Two important shows succeed by the nature of their painting rather than originality of subject, while a third tries to make its points by details outside the craft of painting.

Indefinable qualities are part of the work of Jude Rae, at the Jensen Gallery until the end of October. By some special magic she lifts her work beyond realistic illustration to that special realm people recognise as art.

It is not subject matter that makes Rae's paintings so special: she has substituted the linens and the porcelain bowls that were formerly the material of her still-life painting with gas bottles and fire extinguishers.

In painting after painting she assembles a group of fat rotund bottles matched with tall, thin bottles and the valves that sit on top of them, and from these groups she has made something very impressive.

The painting is absolutely traditional. Frequently the background of the work is a patterned wall. These are done over a red underpainting which is allowed to just show through and energise the patterns.

The bottles are elegantly painted, carefully modelled to convey their roundness, and with a little dab of paint on the highlights as well as delicate reflections and shadows from the mild, undramatic lighting.

The bottles, low and fat, tall and slim, and the bigger ones with protection around the valves like the cheek pieces of a helmet, are given presence by the way the colours play off each other.

This presence is so strong that even a solitary bottle or two identical bottles standing side by side look almost like icons. The colour is mostly delicate.

One work, Still Life 141, is a combination of yellow and blue that is as sweetly harmonised as a painting by Vermeer, who often used the same colours.

Vermeer, though, would not have used the strong note of black which gives authority to this work.

Combinations of black and red alongside the grey of the fat bottles and the patterned background give these still-life paintings extraordinary carrying power. They sing clearly even when seen from the far side of a long gallery.

The principal quality of these remarkable paintings is stillness but ultimately what gives them their special quality is indefinable and the secret of the artist.

There is no wind blowing through the landscapes of Stanley Palmer, at the Anna Bibby Gallery until October 25. The trees are still and the sea is level. As usual his subject is the interpenetration of sea and land, characteristic of the New Zealand coast.

The indefinable thing about these works is why they seem so honest. How is it that we perceive so clearly that the artist cares for these landscapes? This is despite the fact that he suppresses signs of human occupancy to a fence, a hut, a sail in the distance or, in one piquant case, a windsock.

Like Jude Rae, Stanley Palmer brushes his colour on thinly across his linen canvas, but it is sufficient to catch the rhythm of the hills as they fall steeply to the sea, yet they are made soft enough to match the wide skies.

This is the potent exercise of a craft that builds long understanding, observation and experience into art. At times the technique falters when the artist's conventions for foliage are an inadequate equivalent for the reality, although it does lock into the overall harmonies of the painting.

This is unassertive painting that nevertheless captures a New Zealand experience accurately and, in at least one painting, Waikaro, achieves a certain strangeness through the presence of an isolated cabbage tree and that windsock.

They produce a note of oddity that details in other paintings, such as a sail off Browns Island, fail to do.

Directly across the road from Anna Bibby, at Whitespace Gallery, is a Christchurch artist having his first show in Auckland. Martin Whitworth is showing a variety of work in mixed media until October 10.

The variety comes from subject matter and technique. He is quite capable of conventional things like a self-portrait but it is also typical of his work that the self-portrait has a red line around the neck, suggesting choking and stress.

There is nothing placid or still here. Whitworth frequently deals with traumatic things.

Dominating the show is a big crucifixion where the body of Christ - or the artist or Everyman - has crashed to the bottom of the ladder as it is being taken down from the cross. Pieces of real rope are incorporated in the work, and modern, lead-headed nails spike through the crown of thorns.

It is debatable whether these real objects add to the effect of the painted image but the position of the body is dramatic and touching.

The technique of using real pieces of equipment, such as groundsheets from World War II, continues in works that discuss his father's wounding and visionary experiences during the war.

This produces an effect closer to a museum exhibit rather than art. Other paintings that are hammered full of holes also seem mannered compared to the elegant classicism of Vase and Nude and the Portrait of Ted Bracey.

Additions which do not reinforce the quality of the original idea extend to a work where two fine heads are saddled with the title, Pessi Miss and Opti Mister.