Nic Dempster's works reach back to a different time.
A rugged, unhurried time when clocks moved slowly and hills rolled endlessly.
Dempster (30) grew up in Waikouaiti in a fourth-generation farming family.
His parents, Lindsay and Margaret Dempster, still run "Polycreek" and "The Hummock" in the area, raising merino sheep, beef cattle and deer.
"I was the eldest of two boys and farming is what my brother, James, and I thought we'd always be doing. I didn't really want to be a farmer, but that was where I thought I was headed," Dempster muses after arriving back home for the first time in two years.
His latest exhibition of paintings, watercolours and linocuts, "Travelling Through", opens at Gallery De Novo today.
The works range from familiar rural scenes of Otago country churches and rolling hinterland to exotic cities and far-off lands.
"I suppose what I do is not really contemporary. It's got that old-school thing happening. I like to keep clean lines and I like something that looks pleasing. I'm also not too religious about getting the colours right," he says.
"Sometimes, I get told that I make places look better than they are. Artists are selective in what we choose. It goes through a kind of filter.
"I'll sit in front of a blank piece of board and try to put something bigger into the frame. I try to make it more compact and distort perceptions to make it fit."
After his early beginnings in Waikouaiti, Dempster's horizons broadened when he started at St Kevin's College in Oamaru as a boarder.
"I became fascinated with old-school New Zealand artists such as Nigel Brown, Rita Angus, Doris Lusk, Colin McCahon, Michael Smithers and Toss Woollaston. I even did a School Certificate project on Nigel Brown.
"They influenced me a lot and I try to keep that spirit up," he says.
"I just love their lifestyle and the way they lived and painted. Growing up reading about these artists was intriguing. It was also an escape from working on the farm."
Eventually, Dempster did escape the farm, studying art history and gender studies at the University of Otago, horticulture at Otago Polytechnic and then spending two years at Teachers College before working at the now-defunct Rosslyn Gallery, where his interest in art was reignited when he began selling his paintings through the gallery.
It wasn't until Dempster and his pharmacist partner, Simon Poynter, moved to Herne Bay, on the Kent coast, southeast England, two years ago that he decided to embrace art as a career.
"We decided to have a civil ceremony and settle down there," he says.
"But then I tried for six months to find work and I couldn't find anything. There's not much call for a masters in history over there. So I decided to become a full-time artist."
Herne Bay (population: 35,188) has a burgeoning vivid art scene and Dempster was soon in the mix.
In June, he had his first exhibition in England, "Town and Country", at the Fish-Slab Gallery in nearby Whitstable.
"I was getting the same kind of comments I got back home in Dunedin all those years ago when I started out. It was amazing. I sold half of the show during the exhibition run and from that I have permanent galleries in both Whitstable and Margate carrying my work."
After the exhibition, Dempster was invited to chair the Fish-Slab Gallery Committee, which runs the artist collective gallery space.
He has since been busy renovating the gallery, installing a new hanging system and working on new signage and advertising.
"Since the exhibition, I feel I have really turned a corner and am coming into my own a lot more.
"I have learnt to take what I am doing more seriously and expand into other areas that have always interested me, such as the linocuts.
"I was always interested in linocuts, because I thought my style was suited to it and it's another way to show people my work.
"It's also very quick. I can get a print done in a day, whereas an oil painting might take two weeks.
"I used the profits from my last exhibition to buy a printing press, but I used the wrong ink and everything came out terribly.
"So, I stuffed it all back in the box and forgot about it. But then, six months later, I dug it all out again and had another go. I think I've got it right, now."
Dempster's eye for colour traces Otago's four seasons, from the autumnal palette of gold, red and orange to the crystal blue and aqua green waters of Otago's lakes.
But his work retains an olde worlde charm that has international appeal and can be found in private collections in Dubai, Bahrain, Japan, Australia, Canada, America, Spain, Ireland and the United Kingdom.
"I like to think that my work documents the past, but also has that timeless appeal."
And while Dempster is resigned to pulling back on the gumboots and mucking in while he's home on the farm near Waikouaiti, he has no regrets about pursuing his new, greener pastures.
"I really feel that `Travelling Through' is my best [exhibition] yet. I think that the work has lifted and it comes from a better place compared to last year.
"I suspect that next year, with our imminent arrival back home, my work will improve further still."
