Depicting devastation

  • 27 January 2025

As Geoff Park states in the Introduction to his book, Ngā Uruora, p. 13. "With no evidence of the forest's trees, ferns and birds, there can be none of the signal from the wild that might one day predispose their inhabitants to walk more lightly on this part of the planet." I've been struggling with how I depict the loss (and the care and hope) in my work.

This edition of Art New Zealand magazine contained a trio of articles touching on this subject of artists documenting the deforestation of New Zealand.

The Passing of the Forest by Richard Wolfe

p102
"NZ's natural environment remained relatively undisturbed for some 23 million years. But that lal changed with the arrival of Māori ancestors from East Polynesia. At that stage most of the land was covered in forest, but those early settlers burned off large areas to flush out game birds such as moa.."

"The process continued with the next wave of settlers. In 1840.. At the beginning of European settlement approximately 53 percent of the country was bush clad, but from the 1870s much of it was converted to pasture...".

Artists mentioned/work depicted:
Nicholas Chevalier 'Pigeon Bay Creek, Banks Peninsula, NZ' 1867
John Barr Clark Hoyte 'Akaroa Harbour' c 1875
William Watkins 'Akaroa' 1876
Jenny Wimperis 'Untitled (New Zealand Bush)' 1883
George Ernest Pruden 'Early Colonial Farm Clear, Mt Egmont in the background' 1909
Margaret Stoddart 'Bush Fire, Paraparaumu' c 1908

An article mentioned in the Bibliography:

Frozen Flame & Slain Tree, The Dead Tree Theme in New Zealand Art of the Thirties and Forties by Michael Dunn

"... artists of the nineteen-thirties and 'forties were responsive to this particular subject. Painters as diverse as Gordon Walters, Rita Angus and Russell Clark made works featuring dead trees: as did John Holmwood and Mervyn Taylor, to mention only the better-known and most significant."

"To begin with, it is important to realize that whole forests of native trees were being destroyed by the axe and by fire in the process of clearing the land for agriculture or sheep farming."

Days of Labour, Days of Rest by David Eggleton
Robert Scott's Recover the Land
p 74

A Case and a Camera by Gregory O'Brien
Mark Smith & Felicity Jones, A Cultivated Wilderness
p. 95

 

More to come as I read through these articles.

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