Brass and iron, glass, and pottery. These are things that remain and endure through time. The objects in these paintings represent those things that emerge from the metal worker’s forge, the glass blower’s furnace and the potter’s kiln.
They are the remains of moments of creativity in the service of everyday life, that served and beautified routines and ways of life that now remain only in fragments of memory, images of childhood and the stories of our parents.
The artisans too, whose work they are, have long since gone. Like the flowers we place in them, these makers flourished for a moment and then disappeared.
These things remain, links to past ways of life; to the dreams and hopes from which we ourselves emerged. A wedding gift, a souvenir, a small treasure carried from home to anchor new endeavors.
What survives is often random. Everyday things become treasures, because we see in them a form of beauty that outlives the practical.
Perhaps they help to anchor us in time. Sharing the special places, we afford the ephemeral beauty of flowers, they remind us that, while we too will quickly pass and fade, we are part of something that came before.
Born of fire, they reflect and refract the light that living things absorb and turn to flower, flesh and blood. Though solid, they are but ghosts.
The flower lives, transforming light to substance, until the secateurs bite consigns it to the world of shadows.
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Opening night : Thursday 24 September, 5.- 8 pm
Artist talk: Saturday 10 October, 2.30 pm
A discussion with Peter Atkinson to uncover the hidden layers and timeless, symbolic resonance within his exquisitely painted canvases.
Part of Artweek Auckland 2020 Programme