Peter Cleverley: Between Transience and Eternity
Author(s): Alistair Fox
This beautiful, heavily illustrated book traces Peter Cleverley's formation and evolution as an artist, identifying the myriad influences that aroused in him a profound sense of the transience of human life and the paradoxical complexity of the human condition. The portrait that results shows how Cleverley's sense of the human condition has allowed him to convey it symbolically in a way that simultaneously captures not only the fragility of human life, but also its joys. His art communicates an appreciation of the beauty of this world and the gift of being alive, together with the value of art as a means of transcending mutability. Cleverley is a painter whose work is destined to be recognised for making an important contribution to the history of art in Aotearoa New Zealand.
General Information
- :
- : Quentin Wilson Publishing
- : Quentin Wilson Publishing
- : books
Other Specifications
- : Alistair Fox
More About The Product
Alistair Fox is a New Zealand scholar, former university administrator, and writer who specialises in English Tudor literature and history, New Zealand literature and cinema studies, contemporary literary and film theory, particularly with regard to national identity and the creative process. From 2019-2022, he has regularly written catalogue essays, most frequently for RDS Gallery, Dunedin, which he owned from 2020-2022. Despite his involvement in international scholarship, Alistair Fox has lived his whole life in the South Island of New Zealand, and has developed his career from his base in the University of Otago, where he taught several generations of students for 40 years. A keen tramper who loves the bush and mountains of Te Waipounamu, he has always been especially interested in the influence of the landscape on the New Zealand psyche, a theme that he has recently pursued in studies of art by Otago painters who have exhibited at RDS Gallery, which is now directed by his wife, Hilary Radner.
Acknowledgements 7
Introduction 9
An Artist is Formed 14
Origins 16
Inspirations and Training 24
Discovering the World: Overseas Travels 34
Becoming a Painter: The Return Home 42
Aesthetic Principles and Stylistic Practices 50
Paintings of Early and Mid-Career 60
Introduction 62
Kakanui and the Early Still-Life Paintings, 1979-88 64
Human Figures, 1986-92 72
'Heaven Is Here': Landscapes, 1994-2007 90
Off the Back of a Truck: Boxes and the Dog Animal, 2006-11 108
Dans la force de l'age 124
Introduction 126
Boat People and the Poor List 128
World Girls and Transnational Migration 138
Always There: Between Transience and Eternity 150
Conclusion 164
Exhibitions 166
Works Cited 168
Endnotes 170
Index 175
