Loren Marks

Loren Marks creates her work from a studio in an industrial setting on the Te Atatū peninsula in Tāmaki Makaurau. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design in 2013, and she has worked as a print and textile designer in the fashion industry. This background in textiles complements her knowledge of art, adding to her sense of colour and composition. Her paintings push representation of the human figure to the point of breakdown, almost reading as abstract or pattern-oriented artworks.

Marks has produced a new body of work for Contemporary Figurative . These paintings draw inspiration from a range of sources, including Roman wall painting. Marks encountered exquisite frescoes while travelling in Greece and Italy, and this point of reference informs her approach to painting. Starting from a base of thin paint layers of washes, Marks engages in a intuitive painting process, layering paint and allowing images to emerge. In a process she likens to archaeological digging, she uses turpentine-soaked brushes to ‘excavate’ the canvas, removing areas of paint. The result is a stunning painterly effect that blurs the lines between figurative painting and gestural abstraction.

Adieu is a fascinating example of the artist’s work. Two faces can be clearly seen in the composition, one in profile and the other in a three-quarter view. Other planes of colour could be read as a torso and legs, though other readings are also possible. The figures are enveloped in gestural whorls of paint. In Adieu , and throughout this body of work, Marks’ astute command of colour and composition is clearly evident.

Once

There by

2023

Jennifer Mason is dedicated to exploring the figure through painting. She has worked with a number of models to create highly refined and tightly composed works, which present contemplative, reclining figures. Mason’s work connects with a broad range of historic influences, including Renaissance and Dutch Golden Age sources, though it subtly speaks to contemporary cultural themes. Mason’s subjects are all female, and are all painted nude, yet they challenge the culturally omnipresent objectifying gaze that so many images of nude women cater to.

Mason’s work is meticulously crafted, comprised of numerous layers of paint with subtle chromatic gradients. Her palette is light and constrained; rather than a broad spectrum of lights and darks, they sit within a neatly bracketed tonal range. These works take long hours to produce. The results are achieved through a delicate process of layering, using tiny brushes to build up the surfaces. Mason developed this unique painting process through the use of watercolour when she first came to painting. As she moved into working with oil paint, she adapted techniques from watercolour –using thin translucent layering, rather than the thick impasto application often seen in oil painting.

Mason cites 15th century Flemish artist Rogier van der Weyden and 19th century French academic painter WilliamAdolphe Bouguereau as notable influences. In particular, she is drawn to the use of colour, light, and subtle tonal gradients in their work, and that seen in other sources of religious art.

Mason studied towards the MFA program at Glasgow School of Art (2015), completed Post-Graduate studies at the State University of New York (2004), and holds a Post Graduate Diploma and a Bachelor’s degree from Elam School of Fine Arts, along with a Bachelor of Arts in Women’s Studies from the University of Auckland. Jennifer Mason’s work is represented by Melanie Roger Gallery in Auckland.

750 x 1000mm price $11,500

300 x 380mm price $3,500 price $

Over the past two decades, Garth Steeper has developed a unique approach to representational painting. His artworks feature contrasting approaches to technique – at times working in heavy impasto, at others using layers of thin glazing. He graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts in 2003, and in the years since has exhibited regularly. His work often explores themes of New Zealand’s early colonial history, featuring scenes from whaling settlements and logging camps in native forests. A painter of contrasts, Steeper also creates works of homage, recontextualising the work of historical artists in his own style. A consistent feature of his paintings is a striking chiaroscuro palette – making use of dramatic contrast between light and dark.

In the body of work presented in Contemporary Figurative, Steeper has drawn from two historic sources to create highly compelling works of homage. Yet, he explores these historical points of reference through a contemporary lens, with brushwork and painting approach that is very much of the present. Three of his works present aspects of Michelangelo’s David, one of the most widely-celebrated Renaissance masterpieces. Another reworks a section of French Romantic painter Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa. This reimagining of historic artworks is a form or artistic reinvention practiced by countless artists throughout history. It was notably a feature of the work of New Zealand painter Tony Fomison, who Steeper cites as a significant influence. In this way, these works – or ‘passages of paint’, as the artist has styled them –are works of double-layered homage. Steeper’s painting A Kauri Gum Worker, painted in 2022, is unique in this selection, in that it stems from the artist’s individual visual repertoire and engagement with the activities of early European settlers in Aotearoa.

26 Garth Steeper