Self portraits influenced by wallpaper patterns

Viky Garden included striking patterns in her self-portraits so viewers would "fight to see" the works.

The discovery of a 1930s black and white photograph of her father with his brothers and sisters provided an interesting departure point for the latest exhibition by Auckland painter Viky Garden.

"I was fascinated by the domestic details: crocheted doilies, rugs, clothes, patterned furniture ... but what really struck me was the bold, arabesque wallpaper," she says, referring to the large fleur-de-lis motif that recurs in her Arabesques exhibition.

"I came across the thing and I knew straight away that the fleur-de-lis was a feminine characteristic and it has been used throughout history for that reason. And that it wasn't just the fact that it was a design on wallpaper.

"Transposing that wallpaper from my father's family's photo from the 1930s and me being a part of that family and being in front of it [in the paintings], that was really exciting."

For Garden, busying up the images with bold patterning, both in the background and on the figures' clothing, is also a way to encourage a more careful viewing of the paintings.

"What thrilled me was that the viewer was now going to have to fight to see the portrait. Why should I make it easy?"

All the paintings in Arabesques are self-portraits and Garden delights in her own naturalistic portrayal.

"You could not perceive that as being a young woman," she says, pointing to a picture of a cleavage-revealing open top.

"There's a nice truism about the fact that I am painting a woman who is in mature age, mid-40s now and there's a slight hint of what that is.

"They're not the media's ideal of feminine portrayal. But I introduced the slightly feminine cardigan just to play with that whole juxtaposition of starkness and then something [else] creeping in. But also, it's to challenge that whole theory of introducing pattern, therefore it becomes decorative, therefore it becomes lightweight. That's just rubbish."

Another presumption that irks Garden is that portraiture is a dated format.

"My feeling is that portraiture is much maligned. I think it suffers from history and tradition, which in a lot of people's minds makes it seem a very old-fashioned thing. It's not ground-breaking - the ground had been broken centuries ago.

"That's ironic when you consider that when you flick on your TV, all the programmes are reality me, me, me-based and people are watching people more than they ever have been."

The strong emphasis on fabrics is a continuation from her last show, Femme - Bridal Suite, which featured delicate lace handkerchiefs and detailing from female undergarments. Garden says these are presented because they are women's objects and explains that she has become obsessed with collecting odd clothing from internet auction site Trade Me.

"Now I'm buying clothes that I know are going to be used in my work," she says with a laugh. "It started off as a great tax idea ... and now I can't get rid of the dresses or clothing. I haven't the heart to."

Over the last few years Garden's paintings have taken on a looser, more gestural style, emphasised by the use of bigger brushes, coarse hessian canvases and heavily delineated areas of solid colours.

This has partially arisen from an interest in British abstract painter Ben Nicholson.

"I have people whose work I love," she says. "The Ben Nicholson influence is to have the open line and a much more flowing kind of line, which goes with the way I do the contour drawings.

"I look in the mirror and I don't look at the board so I get a slightly distorted portrait because of that. It's nice not being responsible for that line in an academic way."

Garden's trademark style of exaggerating forms through drawing is a technique she also attributes to an influence much earlier in life.

"I credit that, I think, to being given a library book when I was 11, on [Henri de] Toulouse-Lautrec."

The simple introduction of a line can transform an abstract background into a fabric, which Garden says can represent movement and change.

"All my work has to do with time and change and love and death. It is what I'm interested in.

"Of course, since I started painting, even from that family photograph, one of my aunts has died, so it's moving on.

"Nothing stays the same, nothing stays still."

* Arabesques by Viky Garden, Edmiston Duke Gallery, 28 Lorne St, to April 28