Abstract:
Bookended by tributes to the artist by Hamish Keith and TJ McNamara, my text on Mary McIntyre’s painting is the first comprehensive account of her work. An artist whose oeuvre spans seven decades and who has been painting since the 1950s, McIntyre is a painter who has been sorely neglected in the history of New Zealand art. Her work documents her life – her marital, social and psychological states. Parallel to such narrative works and images of friends and family, McIntyre paints portraits – her work is a visual record of the arts scene in New Zealand during the latter part of the twentieth century. The invitation to document and analyse Mary McIntyre’s place in the history of New Zealand art resulted from a paper I delivered at the Forgotten Peoples Missing Dimensions conference at Waikato University in 1999. Prior to that paper, no more than xxxx articles on McIntyre’s work had been published or presented. Thus my book is entirely the product of primary research – all the material was gleaned from interviews with McIntyre, her family, friends and acquaintances, from which I pieced together this chronological survey of her work. To supplement my art historical analysis I collated a section of Collectors’ Comments to allow for a range of personal perspectives and responses to McIntyre’s works. For this, I personally approached people who had collected McIntyre’s work at various stages of her career, especially in the early years, inviting them to provide a written comment teat outlined their personal response to the artist’s work. I was the sole researcher and writer of this book and I was also involved in all aspects of its production. I sourced the images that accompany the text, organised copyright and arranged the photography of the paintings. The layout of the book is my concept and I worked alongside the designer on the arrangement of the text and the xxx images. The publication of the book led to several collectors and earlier acquaintances of McIntyre’s contacting me – so the research continued. A spin off was the mounting of an exhibition of McIntyre’s work at the Auckland City/ Wallace Arts Trust gallery at the Pah Homestead, Auckland I in xxxx. I provided the wall texts for this exhibition and continue to write on her new work that shows at her Auckland gallery, Whitespace.