Abstract:
James Cousins and William Field completed Bachelors of Fine Art in Painting at the University of Canterbury in 1989. After 30 years of divergent art practices and professional pursuits, they converge in Lateral re Boot at the Olga Gallery. Over this time Cousins has developed his art practise completing a MFA in 2001 and continuing as a Senior Lecturer at Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland. His works are represented in private and public collections throughout Aotearoa. Field went on to study landscape architecture and to practise as a professional landscape architect utilising design skills informed by his fine art background. In 2018, Field recommenced painting with Lateral re Boot presenting a selection of recently completed works. Lateral re Boot presents a reunion of sorts, an opportunity to bring together two painters whose shared formative art school years have been instrumental to the paths each has taken. This exhibition is a culmination of new works that in some way represents these years of divergent art and design pursuits. The two series of works create an intriguing interplay, one side featuring amorphous areas of colour separated from the viewer by fine linear overlays, and the other featuring a buried stratigraphy of bold layers. Both series suggest a history of realities which can never be fully grasped owing to the interposition of metaphorical distance. In creating this effect through abstraction alone, both artists our posing questions on the nature of reality and our perception of it.
