Tony Fomison destroyed himself with cheap whisky and cigarettes. Garth Cartwright recalls his friendship with the painter whose life has been documented in a new book.
One winter evening in 1985, I knocked on the front door of 194a Sydney St West in Thorndon, Wellington’s historic inner-city suburb. The door opened and a wizened, somewhat hunched figure cast his eye over me, then indicated I should enter. Little did I know but my sojourn as the sorcerer’s apprentice was about to begin.
Tony Fomison, then resident at the Rita Angus Cottage, was widely regarded as one of New Zealand’s finest painters, if not an easy one to pigeonhole. He came from a working-class Christchurch family, referenced the old masters of European art and literature, never hewed to modernist or post-modernist art convention, had been institutionalised in England (mental health) and New Zealand (heroin), aligned himself with Māori and Pasifika communities, rejected bourgeois convention and lived as an outsider. All these qualities feature in his eerie, mournful paintings that, to my mind, rank among the most remarkable post-World War II art created anywhere.
In 1985, Tony was 45, a chain-smoking alcoholic who eschewed food and viewed life with jaundiced cynicism. I was 21, raised in Auckland’s Mt Roskill, a picture of clean living and an optimistic art novice. I’d hitched down to Wellington to interview Tony for the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly. Opposites attract? It appears so and, for much of the next five years, we would be close.
There were good times, bad times and sad times. Tony was a deeply troubled man, brilliant yet mired in self-loathing. Mark Forman’s biography, Tony Fomison: Life of the Artist, has ensured I’ve been reliving memories from when I was young and Tony, an “old soul” in every sense, was grimly approaching the end of his life.
My introduction to Tony’s art occurred a year earlier when, on a damp July afternoon, I entered the Auckland Art Gallery, experiencing Anxious Images: Aspects of recent New Zealand art. Wandering – and wondering – through and around the paintings on display zapped me: Jacqueline Fahey’s fraught domesticity, Philip Clairmont’s psychedelic sofas, Jeffrey Harris’s alienated groupings, Alan Pearson’s operatic canvases and – especially, essentially – the largely monochrome work of Tony Fomison.
Tony was a chain-smoking alcoholic who eschewed food and viewed life with jaundiced cynicism.
Before I set foot in Anxious Images, my 20-year-old self had never given any real thought to visual art. I’ve never stopped thinking about such since. I bought the Anxious Images catalogue and, in the entry on Tony, mention was made of Goya and Caravaggio. I knew little about either but I now wanted to learn more about them and the other great painters.
By the time I met Tony, I’d been a freelance journalist for four years and had interviewed everyone from veteran Mexican-American country singer Freddy Fender and British reggae band UB40 to anti-abortion activist Connie Purdue and Polynesian Panther Will ‘Ilolahia. But I’d never encountered anyone like Tony. And now, nearly 40 years later, I can assuredly state I haven’t since.
That evening of my Woman’s Weekly interview, Tony chain-smoked menthol cigarettes and sipped from a bottle of whisky. He was friendly, thoughtful, chuckled as he told stories in his dry, raspy voice, and answered every question I asked. Initially, I’d tried to keep up with him sipping whisky but soon realised this wasn’t wise, so asked if I could make tea. He directed me to the cottage’s kitchen and there, among the chaos, I found a teapot which, when I opened it, was full of mouldy teabags. Convention, I’d quickly learn, played little part in Tony’s make-up.
Around midnight, I stumbled out of the cottage, bidding him good night, thinking it unlikely the young novice and the old master would meet again. The following afternoon the phone rang in the apartment where I was staying. I answered and Tony asked, “What are you up to?” Nothing planned. “Come over,” he said, “I’ve been invited to a party.”
Follow the maverick
On completing his residency at the cottage, Tony shifted to Barry Brickell’s Driving Creek Pottery in Coromandel. He wrote, inviting me to visit – off I hitched, relishing the prospect of observing this maverick close up. Then, when Tony determined he wanted to live in Auckland again, he arrived at my student house, the last dive villa in Parnell, with his suitcase, easel and paints. We had a tiny spare room, used for storing the vacuum cleaner alongside junk, and here Tony set up a kit bed and easel, and lived rent free for several months. When Tony met my Samoan flatmate Foa, he addressed him in Samoan (causing Foa’s jaw to drop). He was very proud of his pe’a tattoo and enjoyed his honorary status among certain Auckland Samoan families.
Tony’s return to the city meant we had a steady stream of visitors through our door ‒ the photographer Mark Adams and poet David Mitchell among them. Some chastised Tony over his drinking – he drank steadily, rarely appearing drunk, just as he painted slowly and conscientiously – but, when this happened, he angrily insisted they leave.
Tony shifted once he managed to find a property in Grey Lynn. He loved that suburb, even as it was then gentrifying. I still saw him regularly and, in 1987, he requested I drive him around New Zealand. I didn’t realise it then, but Tony wanted to say “goodbye” to people, so off we went, dropping in on artists and collectors, curators and family members, crashing in spare rooms or on sofas. I drove and he paid for petrol. It was winter and I recall constantly being cold. One night, we visited painter Allen Maddox in Napier. I’d heard terrifying stories of Maddox, a man with a huge propensity for violence, and unlike Tony, his behaviour changed as the whisky kicked in. I spent that night fearing for my life. Why was I Sancho Panza to Tony’s Don Quixote? I don’t know. Something about him fascinated me. Or, at least, his art continued to enchant me.
Tony placed no value on intimate relationships, but great value on friendships. He described artist Phil Clairmont’s suicide as “one I’ll never get over”. After we visited Colin and Anne McCahon and found Colin’s psyche deteriorating, Tony wept in the street and punched a lamp-post, distraught at the state of the man who was once his mentor.
He adored his kid sister Anna, was cowed by his formidable mother and regularly phoned friends for a chat. Tony was a sociable loner, one who wanted peace and quiet so he could paint, yet valued company. An alcoholic, he avoided the company of heavy drinkers – Tony had a work ethic and those who spent their days in pubs, he pointed out, got nothing done.
Early in 1989, Tony was hospitalised in an alcoholic coma. Family and close friends were called to the hospital, where we said our goodbyes. Remarkably, he pulled through and I naively believed he would value the gift of life and mend his ways. Yet within days, one of the Samoan men he employed as a dogsbody despairingly told me Tony had requested he buy whisky.
Watching someone you care for commit slow suicide is awful. This and his abusive treatment of Jenny Doole, a potter/sculptor who tried to care for Tony, meant I stepped back. There were no arguments, no pleadings, I simply followed those who found his behaviour unpalatable. My apprenticeship over, the sorcerer now found wanting.
By then, Tony had exhibited his scratchy lithographs at Auckland’s Muka Gallery and was struggling to complete the paintings for a Gow Langsford Gallery exhibition in June. His dealers had provided him with large canvases, yet Tony was so physically weak he struggled to apply paint.
Thus most of the canvases in the June 1989 exhibition still featured underpainting alongside the outlines for images he had sketched in. I wrote a less-than-enthusiastic overview in Art New Zealand. Tony called me, insisting I shouldn’t have written such because I wasn’t “tangata whenua”. When I pointed out that neither was he, Tony started shouting he was “tangata whenua”, his voice wheezy and weak. “Tony, you’re Pākehā,” I replied. He slammed down the phone. The next time I encountered him, he was in a coffin.
Māori influences
Tony Fomison lived and died a mystery, not least in regard to his desire to assimilate with Māori/Samoan culture. His interest in Māori culture had begun as a teenager, when he’d spend summers detailing Māori rock art in South Canterbury. Māori references began entering his work in the early 1970s and he painted several portraits of 19th-century Māori rebels – very slight works, Tony’s gifts as a painter didn’t extend to portraiture – before Māori artists/activists made it clear to him that he should stop “appropriating” their ancestors and culture.
He then attached himself to Auckland’s Samoan community, which led to him receiving the pe’a.
Although Tony never explained why he felt so drawn to Polynesia, I surmised he was fleeing Pākehā culture, with its emphasis on materialism, sport and being a “good bloke”. Having tried a derangement of the senses with hard drugs, he found it produced limited visions (alongside inviting persecution from the state).
I’d rather he’d gifted me a painting in exchange for being his Baldrick.
Not unlike Gauguin, Tony went searching for a South Seas nirvana that didn’t exist but inspired his art and a vision of a multicultural Aotearoa. He used Polynesian references in his art and words in his speech, championed an alternate history to the colonial one we were indoctrinated with and, importantly, encouraged Polynesian artists to create and exhibit. His championing of Samoan painter Fatu Feu’u led to Feu’u forging a path many have followed.
Forman’s biography is a deep dive into a man no one truly knew well. At one point, Forman sent me copies of black and white photos of Fomison that he’d found in Auckland Art Gallery’s research library, wondering if I recognised the studio or had any idea of the photographer. I replied they were taken in the Rita Angus Cottage. By me. I’d not seen them since gifting librarian Ron Brownson a selection of prints in 1985.
Memories bubbled up alongside a sense of bafflement: why did I do so much for Tony yet never requested anything in return? It’s not as if I was a true apprentice who wished to learn techniques of oil painting from him. Indeed, if I learnt anything from Tony it was how not to live your life: he was a deeply troubled man. Perhaps this lesson was my reward. Still, I’d rather he’d gifted me a painting in exchange for being his Baldrick.
Why did an artist with such talent – and Tony believed in his talent – and many admirers, destroy himself with cheap whisky, cigarettes and an anorexic diet? And why was he determined to be seen as Māori/Samoan? I don’t know the answers and Forman’s biography of this complex, disturbed man doesn’t pretend to provide them.
Tony had “issues” that he never came to terms with. He fled into art and other cultures, but nothing provided any real relief from his torment. No matter, he was our old master and one of the finest painters Aotearoa has produced – and is ever likely to.
Tony Fomison: Life Of The Artist, by Mark Forman (Auckland University Press, $59.99), was published on March 13. Fomison’s immediate family do not endorse the biography and turned down the Listener’s request to reproduce any of his artworks.