Wild energy captured and celebrated
Painter Neil Frazer simply calls it “one of the most amazing places in the world”.
Photographer Craig Potton revels in its massive landscapes and wild energy.
The artistic friends have a long-term love affair with the coast around Farewell Spit and Wharariki Beach, in the remote north-western corner of Nelson, which is dotted with towering rock formations and large sea caves.
They have teamed up in a three-year project culminating in an exhibition at the Craig Potton Gallery in Nelson and a large format artbook, All at Sea.
Their collaboration is artistic but also carries a message about the beauty of landscapes so close to home, and the threat posed to them by what Potton describes as “the heavy hand of humans” through global warming, overfishing and pollution.
“The fact is we are destroying the oceans. It’s not a heavy political message … it’s more of a feeling to get us to love our land more, to love our ocean more and to love our place more.”
Frazer is a Sydney-based Kiwi who began his artistic career as an abstract painter, with works held in major private and public collections in New Zealand, including the Suter Gallery.
The latter part of his career has seen him shift into more representational works, a “figurative energetic way of painting”. He often combines elements of the two styles, such as thickly layered splashes of white up close that resolve into wild surf from a distance.
It’s the energy of the sea and its constant battle with the land, in an area with relatively few visitors, that has drawn him back to the Farewell Spit coast and made the project with Potton an easy decision. The pair also spent time at Punakaiki, using a drone to get a different perspective on the weird and wonderful rock stacks.
Leading landscape photographer Potton remains an active conservationist, and is on the board of the HealthPost Nature Trust that has created an eco-sanctuary at Wharariki/Farewell Spit. Potton has a holiday home near Pakawau and has been fascinated by the sea’s many moods, from the calm waters inside the arm of the spit, to surfing the wild waves on the West Coast side.
Potton believes that Frazer is the best painter to have captured the area.
The exhibition and book were “a sort of love story about the coast”, he said.
“We both love the wild, love the ocean.
“We want to be celebratory about it. You go around the world and as Fraze said you don’t find places much better than that and it’s only three hours drive to the (Farewell Spit) car park if you stop for a coffee on the way.”
All at Sea is showing at the Craig Potton Gallery + Store until August 21, and the book is also on sale at the store. Some of the book proceeds will go to conservationists Graeme Elliott and Kath Walker for their work on albatross protection.
By Warren Gamble, Nelson Mail
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