About 100 people are expected to join the artist for the launch of Graham Brinsley: 30 Years of Painting - Retrospective and New Works, in the gallery of the Lakes District Museum, in Arrowtown, today, at 6pm.
"I can remember doing every one and at every time, and luckily the old ones my parents, sister and friends had, and I could borrow," Brinsley said this week.
"The interesting thing is the change in style and probably the influences from artists I might have met, or looked at.
"Sometimes I was really detailed, sometimes I was almost abstract. Now it's a combination of everything I've been doing for years."
The 47-year-old Speargrass Flat Rd professional artist mounts 25 artworks he painted between the ages of 13 to 42 in chronological order. He also presents 25 works created in the last few years, which are for sale.
Brinsley started selling his paintings at outdoor markets during family holidays in Wanaka at the age of 15.
He studied English and philosophy at the University of Otago for two years, "more for fun than anything else, but painting until 4am every day. I can't do that any more."
The Arrow River, Macetown, the Remarkables, the West Coast, Fiordland and Stewart Island are among the familiar locations depicted on his mostly oils on canvases on show.
Brinsley said his favourites are Coronet Peak from Arrowtown Golf Course (2010), a snow-covered vista with tussocks in the foreground, and the more than 2m-long Purakaunui Bay (2010) coastal seascape, both oils on canvases using a palette knife and brush.
A Spanish market scene and a town on the Greek island of Santorini are among the works painted during his frequent travels around Europe, England and Scotland since 1995.
The Irish market had particularly responded favourably to his talents and he had travelled to Ireland annually over the past four years.
Two rare portraits, of his two daughters when they were children, are also featured.
"I have painted in the North Island and Europe, but I really like the Central Otago colours, wonderful browns and ochres you don't get anywhere else in the world," he said.
• Graham Brinsley: 30 Years of Painting - Retrospective and New Works, runs until February 6, 2011.
