Rich and precious world

By TJ McNAMARA

Art and religion have always been closely associated. For the believer, religion gives truth. For art, it gives symbols with a religious spirit.

The New Paintings of Herb Foley at the Oedipus Rex Gallery until November 20 draw on religious motifs symbolising the value of nature.

In an icon, gold is a background to honour a religious figure. In a number of these paintings it is used to show how precious and rich the natural world is.

The detail in Foley's natural world ranges from fossils in rock, fish in the sea, amphibious frogs, native trees and the birds and lizards that live among them to the insects in the air.

All these things are drawn in a stylised way to emphasise their symbolic function but the stylisation convincingly arises from knowledge and observation.

This is particularly true of the birds that inhabit the dense foliage of his paintings. They are always shown sitting in profile as representatives of their species.

Birds and foliage are painted with style and invention with layer upon layer of paint worked in such a way that the surface is always lively and the colour dense and rich.

In a typical work, T Shape, there is a cross loaded with fish, fowl and fossil. Screw heads which dot the painting give a hint of how such things are collected, boxed and classified by human constructors at work in the natural world. Even a range of hills in the top part of the painting has been fixed by this device.

In this painting the experience and skill in the use of paint is exemplified in a strong tall tree set against a red sky with traces of the red swept through nearby bush to suggest danger. This fine, tender, honest painting is paralleled by the atmospheric Moon, where six birds are all exactly characterised, as well as the clever blending of a lizard into the truck of a tree, and stalwart trees. Reigning over all, the moon in gold makes everything precious.

The sense of natural religion is often emphasised by cross shapes. The paintings are at their most effective when they have areas of paint pushed up against floating fragments so they appear to dissolve in a rhythm of life and decay into dust.

Some of the smaller works based on the spiral of an ammonite carry less symbolic significance but the exhibition as a whole is both painterly and philosophical.

At the Jensen Gallery in Upper Queen St, in a show called The Persistence of Memory which runs until Christmas, the well-known New Zealand painter Tony Lane also makes extensive use of gold.

His work, though the subjects are secular, has always had more than a touch of the icon about it. Not only is there the use of gilding but also raised areas of relief on the surface of the canvas. These often take the form of looped pearl jewellery that give a sense of preciousness to the work.

Several of these paintings represent a departure not in style but in subject matter. Two recent works, The Departed and The Saints, maintain the quasi-religious atmosphere but in a new way.

In the foreground of both works is a series of scrolls, unfolded and facing the viewer. The scrolls are set on a table, wooden in one painting and covered with a green cloth in the other.

Behind each scroll a triangular form zooms into the distant dark in deep perspective. The whole surface is unified and sealed with a wax varnish.

The basic idea is that those whose lives are written on the scroll of life may have a reputation that extends into the future but all things pass; memory tapers and reputation ebbs. The number of the scrolls is arbitrary.

As always the paintings convey, because of the contrast between gold and dark, the sense of a precious object - reinforced by a beaded row of pearls in The Saints.

The idea is not completely convincing. The sharp triangular forms are awkward geometric shapes rather than banners or streams that might suggest emotional memories.

There are two other much less audacious paintings in the show where the artist uses a bottle-shape as his symbolic container. This easier to control and the effect is more dense but much less spectacular.

The exhibition is completed by two other contrasting artists. The Portuguese painter Juliao Sarmento deals in violence and pain while Christchurch artist Robin Neate treats nostalgia and sentiment ironically.

The violence illustrated by Sarmento is restrained in expression but powerful in suggestion.

Three splendid etchings show only a knife, a throat, a wrist, a shoulder and a bite or bruise but each one is an implicit drama. Two big works of equal simplicity on yellow paper show headless women presenting themselves as victims.

It takes great skill to make so much of so little.

Neate draws accurately and covers her figures in soft pink, whether they are Harlequin, Pierrot, a Snow Queen or a girl with a cat. The bigger works have real charm, the smaller are trivial unless they are seen as an ironic comment on taste.