On Saturday December 13, I attended a mass at St Mary Star of the Sea at Port Chalmers.
I am not any kind of religious believer but I understood the late Joanna Paul's (1945-2003) Stations of the Cross would be unusually on show and indeed they were.
The church is an attractive small stone building designed by the distinguished architect Francis Petre (1847-1918) and dedicated in 1878. It is modest and fairly plain but by no means unattractive.
The service was dignified, often elegant and not without its human touches and was conducted by Father Aidan. There were some in attendance I took to be regular parishioners but also a number of Ms Paul's friends and relations.
Ms Paul was a Catholic and lived in Port Chalmers in the early 1970s when her stations were painted. They are simplified images, deliberately primitive if you like and intensely, though not luridly coloured. I imagine that following the example of Colin McCahon (1919-1987), one of her teachers, she considered this approach most suitable for the purpose and the setting.
Ms Paul was the daughter of Blackwood and Janet Paul, progressive booksellers and thinkers in Hamilton. Art, literature and music were things taken seriously in that household and Ms Paul was also to develop an interest in and feeling for architecture.
Among overseas painters it has been said Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Bonnard and Morandi were her life-long exemplars.
She attended Marsden College and then the University of Waikato where she studied History, French and English. She spent a year in in London with her family and studied figure drawing and painting at the Sir John Cass School.
She returned to New Zealand in 1965 in which year her father died and she became a Catholic the year after.
She studied English and Philosophy at Auckland University and graduated in 1968 with a BA. In 1967 she had enrolled at Elam and was taught by McCahon, Greer Twiss and Tom Hutchins. She graduated with the Diploma of Fine Arts in 1969.
She spent most of her adult life living in relatively small centres, the first of which was Port Chalmers in 1970, and then Seacliff in 1971. That year she married the expressionist painter Jeffrey Harris (b.1949), started making experimental films and wrote her first considered poetry. It was in this year she painted the Stations of the Cross for St Mary Star of the Sea.
Ms Paul and Mr Harris were later in Wellington where a daughter, Ingrid, was born. They were then on Banks Peninsula where a daughter Imogen was born who sadly died a few months later in late 1976.
Harris was awarded the Frances Hodgkins fellowship and the family moved to Dunedin in 1977. There were another daughter and a son and in 1982 their last son, Pascal, was born. Ms Paul was awarded the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship for 1983.
The following year her marriage ended and she moved north, settling in Wanganui. There she met the architect Peter Harrison whom she married in 2003. Later that year she died accidentally, overcome by fumes at a Rotorua hot pool.
The 14 Stations of the Cross represent incidents as Christ proceeded to his death and later. They include his condemnation, his carrying the cross, his falling under its weight three times, his encountering his mother, Simon of Cyrene helping him carry the cross, his crucifixion, death, the deposition - his being taken down from the cross - and his being laid in the tomb, among other scenes.
These are highly significant events for believers and their representations are frequently intense and harrowing.
Over the long centuries since their presence became common in Catholic churches their artistic treatment has varied with the numerous changes in art. Paul appears to have chosen to return to the simplicity of the very earliest Christian imagery.
The figures are outlined in black. There are few, though bold, colours. Much is left white, or unpainted. They are grouped in plastered diptychs and triptychs. Suffering is apparent but also much sympathy and empathy. They are very well suited to the church.
Some time ago they were covered up with more conventional reproductions of what appear to be 19th century European works. It has been suggested some of the parishioners don't care for Ms Paul's stations and prefer the reproductions.
Ms Paul's works were uncovered for a memorial service for the late Ralph Hotere (1931-2013) but have been covered again until this 13th of December when they were to stay on show for a week.
At least some of the congregation would like to see them remain visible. I think it would be a better choice.
Peter Entwisle is a Dunedin curator, historian and writer.
