Portrait of the artist's grandfather Anthony Lownds Izard

1992
oil on paper mounted on board, 90 x 114 cm (framed behind glass)


In the summer of 1991 I returned to New Zealand for the first time since leaving in 1981. I hitchhiked around the North and South Islands and spent some time with my grandparents in Nelson. I kept a travel sketchbook and did drawings of them which I used later in paintings.

Here my grandfather looks out perhaps through a window at the landscape reflected in the glass. He is surrounded by a collage of landscapes in unrealistic colours. A dominant figure seen like an apparition inhabiting a space both natural and unreal.