B.

Grace Butler was totally committed to painting en plein air, or outdoors, to truly sense and represent the atmospheres that light provided; she would even paint in the snow, placing her feet in boxes and getting her children to rotate hot water bottles and blankets to keep her warm. Completed when she was just two years out of art school and revealing her awareness of the international movement of impressionism, On the Beach, New Brighton reflects Butler’s own thoughts on the light and atmosphere where she lived.

(Endless Light, 29 June 2019 – 8 March 2020)

This immersive and atmospheric painting is thought to be of a paddock Grace Butler’s home on Normans Hill Road, Onehunga. One of the children is Butler’s daughter Margarete, the other is the daughter of friends Alan and Marguerita Mulgan. It is an unapologetically nostalgic work, in which Butler works to conjure the emotional feeling experienced on those special evenings when the sky in apricots and pinks mixes with the golds of a dry summery field and your skin seems to glow from the inside. Luminescing from a low setting sun, light enters this painting as if from behind the viewer, increasing the intimacy of the moment.

(Endless Light, 29 June 2019 – 8 March 2020)