Stacked with canvases and an assortment of desks, tables and shelves that allow just enough room to manoeuvre a paintbrush or melt plastic (more on that later), Maurie Angelo’s studio faces north, to the sun, even though it’s offering only a few watery rays on a recent Friday afternoon.
Still, there’s more than enough light filtering through the windows of Dunedin’s King Edward Court to complement the glint in Angelo’s eyes as he ponders an exhibition of artworks that is part of a Waitangi weekend of celebrations to mark the 300th birthday of an interesting and accomplished ancestor.
Born in Italy in February 1717, Domenico Angelo Tremamondo was a foil fencing master who moved to London in 1755 and established a fencing school. By 1758, he had been appointed fencing master to the Prince of Wales (soon to be George III) and his brother, the Duke of York.
In 1763, he published L’Ecole des Armes, a fencing textbook, and he and his descendants trained generations of wealthy English youth in fencing and horsemanship. Domenico was still coaching fencing at Eton three days before he died at the age of 86.
In 1858 Domenico’s great-grandson, Stewart, moved to New Zealand and settled in Otago. Many of Stewart’s descendants are active fencers and Dunedin’s Salle Angelo Fencing Club was named in honour of the fencing dynasty’s founder, whose surname changed to Angelo at some point.
"One explanation I have heard was that the surname Tremamondo — which means the word trembles — was too difficult for the English to pronounce," Angelo ruminates, adding his exhibition actually includes no works involving swordplay.
"I’d been talking about holding an exhibition because I’m nearing the end of my painting career, a fact of which I was reminded recently when a painting fell on my head," the 84-year-old explains.
"The exhibition has nothing to do with my ancestor as such. All these people are coming; some from the Isle of Wight, some from Australia ... I thought if all these people are coming to Dunedin I might as well put on an exhibition.
"I have dredged out a lot of older work that I like. I’ll have about 30 paintings."
Many of them comprise what Angelo terms "protest paintings", encompassing his long-held concerns about environmental degradation.
He points to a bold, dark, violent painting, which was prompted by the shooting of keas in Arthur’s Pass: "I did that piece in anger," he says.
Later, he peruses a cluster of works that line a corridor, awaiting a car trip to the gallery: "This one here is called Land in Flight. It’s a statement about the land being eaten up.
"I used an acrylic paste, building up the layers. But I don’t like things to be particularly fixed early on; I need room to move, so I often leave a space on the canvas where I can add things."
Born in Dunedin, Angelo spent his early years in Kaikorai Valley before his family moved to Gore in 1937 when he was four. He struggled at school with what was later to be acknowledged as dyslexia and, although art was not a formal school subject, he persevered and chose to major in art at Dunedin Teachers’ College, after which he taught for more than four decades, mainly in Christchurch.
"Teaching was very good to me. It gave me time to look after the kids (he has two grown sons) and time to paint. The more I painted, the more I got involved in it, the better teacher I became. I loved teaching.
"Eventually, I realised I had to change, so I went to Lincoln and studied landscape architecture. I then went back to teaching, lecturing in landscape architecture at Lincoln," Angelo explains.
"I did a bit of landscape architect work myself, but it was a case of sitting down to please somebody. Whereas when I sit down to paint, there is only one person I’m trying to please, and that’s me."
Citing as influences New Zealand artists Bill Sutton, Don Peebles and Barry Cleavin, among others, Angelo started painting in a figurative style, which evolved into an abstract approach that employs heavily textured surfaces.
Which brings us to the idea of burning plastic. Not only does it provide Angelo with a highly textural material that he incorporates into his paintings ("You get landscapes coming up as you burn it ..."), the notion of melting plastic could be regarded as another protest action.
It seems Angelo likes acts of subversion. Take his use of wallpaper as a medium for some of his other paintings: "Some people regard art as a way to match something with their decor. Well, here’s some wallpaper to go with the wallpaper," he laughs.
A full-time artist for the past two decades, Angelo has been the recipient of many awards, including a Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council grant, a Woolf-Fisher fellowship and an award from the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects. He has travelled extensively, including to Asia, the United States and Europe; he and wife Liz Roxborough lived in Le Marche, Italy, for more than a decade; Burke’s Pass, in the Mackenzie Country, was also home until the couple moved to Dunedin several years ago.
He might require a bright red scooter to help him get around town these days, yet Angelo remains on the move. Case in point: he points to an iPad app he has been exploring recently.
"I hate computers and they don’t like me, but I thought I had to bite the bullet so I have been dabbling in computer-based art ... you can paint with it," he enthuses.
As a precursor to a brief overview of some of his more recent digital-based ideas, he unearths a few sketchbooks from another shelf.
"This is the old-fashioned way of capturing ideas ... this one is looking out a window in Greece; this is at Arthur’s Pass ... you find the essence of where you’re messing about. You might use it, you might not. This is a traditional way of doing it, but ...".
He trails off, but the point is clear. He is up for a new challenge.
"You can take digital work, put it together with tactile things, add and subtract images and elements ... I really enjoy playing with these digital works."
Asked if he has thought about getting a 3-D printer, he barely pauses.
"Yes ..." he trails off. The eyes light up again.
