Exhibition of an artist who almost abandoned art

Edith Collier, Coastal Communities, opens at Percy Thomson Gallery Stratford, on Friday December 18 at 6pm.

Edith Collier's contribution to New Zealand art as an innovator, modernist and expatriate painter placed her in a most distinguished group, but her achievements have been eclipsed by the very company she kept - such as Frances Hodgkins and Margaret Preston.

Born in 1885, Edith Collier was the oldest of 10 children growing up in a prosperous and spacious Wanganui home at the turn of the century. In 1903 Edith commenced her studies in art at the Wanganui Technical School producing exquisite charcoal drawings from plaster casts of fish and of classical heads. Encouraged by admirers Edith left for England in 1912 at 27, following in the tradition of 'expatriatism', which was a mark of artistic life in New Zealand during these days. Edith enrolled at the St Johns Wood School of Art and 10 months after her arrival was exhibiting in the Art School Sketch Club.

For the next eight years Edith travelled around England and Ireland, painting landscapes, fishermen and portraits of friends with whom she stayed, rarely exhibiting and periodically working with another New Zealand expatriate, Frances Hodgkins.

Her return to New Zealand in 1921 was to an artistic environment indifferent, even hostile, to her work, with few artistic friends to encourage her. Although mature and an experimental painter respected by painter friends in England, Edith despaired in her native home, laid her brushes aside for almost five years and turned her energy to domestic concerns, nursing her family.

Quietly, Edith took to painting again and between 1922 and 1932 produced all her remaining New Zealand landscapes and family portraits. This exhibition of 40 paintings and drawings has been curated and toured by the Sargeant Gallery, Whanganui and generously supported by the Edith Collier Trust.

Chair of the Edith Collier Trust, Fiona Horrocks, will open the exhibition supported by Trust executive officer Bill Milbank and Sargeant Gallery director Greg Donson.

A group of Whanganui artists will show concurrently in the Community Gallery.

'Holding it Together: A centennial view of women in the World War 1 era' is a collaboration of eight artists; Felicity Priest, Jill Stegmann, Jenn Dickie, Fiona McGowan, Catherine Mcdonald, Katherine Claypole, Lindsay Marsh and Sophie Klerk.

In this centennial year, they are looking at aspects of the lives of women in the World War 1 era. Holding it together is literally what women did in those times, working on farms and in industry while keeping families and communities strong. Shouldering new responsibilities in the workplace was ironically often a liberating experience for many women. However, in waving goodbye to husbands, brothers and daughters, many women faced the possibility of making the ultimate sacrifice of maiming or death of loved ones in battles in faraway lands.

Life went on nonetheless, despite the many added hardships, with aspects of keeping up personal appearances - hairstyles and corsets - while others shone in the arts and protest.

This exhibition is both a celebration and an expression of the many and various lives of women living through those turbulent years.

These exhibitions will be at the Percy Thomson Community Gallery from December 18 to January 31.