Three of New Zealand's foremost artists are sharing the walls at Whanganui's WHMilbank Gallery this month.

Garry Currin, Ross Ritchie and Karl Amundsen have their works on show at the Bell St gallery until September 10.

Ritchie graces the cover, and is the feature artist in the latest Art New Zealand magazine.

He was recently described as "a figurative artist in the sense that his works have always denoted or referred to things, animate and inanimate, and the phenomena of the physical world."

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Bill Milbank says he has a long association with Ritchie who is a former exhibitions officer of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.

"Ross is a journeyman artist these days," he says.

"He travels a lot."

Ritchie's works in the Whanganui exhibition are a series of portraits based on real life subjects that will be recognisable to some.

Whanganui-born Currin lives in Northland these days but his works in this exhibition are locally inspired.

"One set of grandparents lived in Matai St and the other in Cornfoot St and both houses seemed very large and dark when I was a child," he said.

"These works are inspired by those houses which gave me a few nightmares."

Some of Karl Amundsen's portraits have recognisable faces while others have indistinct faces with bodies featuring strong muscle culture.

There is a bare-chested Vincent Van Gogh and a portrait of New Zealand artist Dame Louise Henderson.

"She was my tutor," says Amundsen.

"She had a profound impact on my work and I wanted to capture her in the way she taught me to paint."

Amundsen says he is in the process of making Whanganui his place of residence.

"I have been planning to move here from Auckland over the past year but it has been a bit of a zig-zag process," he says.

The exhibition of works by Garry Currin, Karl Amundsen and Ross Ritchie is open for viewing at WHMilbank Gallery, 1B Bell St, 11am-5pm Tuesday to Sunday.