Jack Trolove's first public solo exhibition opens at Te Manawa in Palmerston North

In a year when our public faces have so often been masked, artist Jack Trolove gives visitors to his exhibition Keening plenty to think about. Photo / Te Manawa

They're big, textured and ready to chat.

Northland artist Jack Trolove's first solo show in a public space has opened - right here in Palmerston North.

"All of these paintings are very excited to be here," Trolove says. "They are very chatty, they want to have conversations."

He told the excited opening night attendees they might walk past some of the works and they will do nothing for you, but others will sing.

"If it does sing go and have a conversation with it because they are full of stories."

He spent two years making the show from his studio near Paparoa, overlooking the muddy world of the Kaipara Harbour.

"It's a beautiful feeling getting to realise something."

Trolove said he has never had the opportunity to show his work in a space as big as Te Manawa's rear art gallery and the paintings look much more like faces than they usually do.

The oil paint on stretched linen paintings are made for this space, place and time, he said.

Trolove thanked his partner Tommy for stopping him scrapping some of the works, half of which wouldn't be in the show if he had not vouched for them.

Trolove says his ancestors are primarily from the Celtic world. He was born in 1979 and raised in Oxford, Canterbury.

He has been a practising artist for more than 20 years and his works have been shown in New Zealand, Australia and Europe.

Trolove has a Master of Fine Arts from Massey University, and last year was awarded a doctoral scholarship at Elam School of Fine Arts, the University of Auckland.

He has been a finalist in the prestigious Wallace Art Awards three times.

Trolove says he doesn't work from life as when he does the work wants to be loyal to the person in front of him. Instead he works from photos, scaffolding the proportions out quickly. He will map a beginning then try to stay alert to where the painting is going. Sometimes he will stay very close to the person, other times they are almost unrecognisable.

Asked at an artist talk on Saturday how he knows when to stop work on a painting, Trolove said sometimes he can almost feel the work breathing as suddenly it is its own body, at which point it seems inappropriate to be touching its face. Other times a deadline is approaching so he will land on technical practice and make a couple of marks.

If the work is going downhill quickly, he will step away and the next day there will be a fully formed painting or one that is half asleep.

Trolove said he tries to make paintings that remind us how much emotional muscle we have.

Asked about his two smaller works, Gorse and Quartz, Trolove acknowledged they were outliers. Gorse felt so outrageous.

"To me, it feels like it works but I can't explain why. It's a tricky customer."

He names his paintings in two ways. Firstly, he will ask them who they are. When that doesn't work he relies on his sister Angela Trolove, a Dunedin poet, for inspiration.

And yes, he was asked if he had a favourite work. "Different ones come alive to me at different moments, that's the honest answer."

Te Manawa chief executive Andy Lowe announced at the opening of Keening it had purchased Trolove's work Architect.

At the exhibition opening, Greens spokeswoman for the arts Dr Elizabeth Kerekere spoke of the absolute trust and belief of the people who let Trolove see into them and reveal them and the truth about us as a people.

In the works Kerekere can see trust, confidence, belief, sadness, pain, but also triumphant.

"Nobody can stand in front of any of these works and not feel."

Art New Zealand reviewer Michael Dunn describes Trolove as a painter of substance and a virtuoso manipulator of paint.

The Details
What: Keening
When: Until April 29
Where: Te Manawa Art Gallery
Entry: Free