Beautiful, elaborate Pacific designs on table tops, cupboards, folding screens as well as ceramics, fabric designs and 80 paintings demonstrating this artist’s delight in decorating everyday objects and recording changes in his family.
Auckland artist Murray Grimsdale is exhibiting a selection of work from the last three decades at the Fisher Gallery, Public Gallery for Manukau City, from Saturday 25 April until Sunday 24 May 1998. The exhibition is called Pacific and Family.
Grimsdale has not limited himself to painting on canvas. He has experimented with many objects from around the home, making unique works out of folding tables and screens, dishes, clothing, wooden doors and other things as well.
Typically he uses bright colours that reflect both the time he has spent teaching in the Pacific, but also express the emotion and warmth of his friends and family. He has spent a considerable amount of time in the last eight years teaching in Vanuatu.
His paintings are about his family and friends, about the birth of a new child and similar events or portraits of people he has come to know. They are honest and reflect the friendship of the artist with the ‘subject’.
Family values are strong in his work, showing a warm, functional, flexible and healthy set of relationships, extending from around Murray’s own, long term gay relationship.
The exhibition includes works from 1965 to the present. These have been borrowed from all over Aotearoa New Zealand. Although a non-selling venue, his works are widely sought after.