Art a path to conservation

Known for her vibrant paintings of New Zealand’s flora and fauna, Dunedin-based artist Clare Reilly is also a strong advocate for conservation. The painter tells  Rebecca Fox how her painting and advocacy go hand in hand in her 50th year of exhibiting.

Clare Reilly first saw tūī, bellbirds and kererū in her grandmother’s Belleknowes garden.

So captivated by their song and beauty she was sad to return home to Paremata, near Wellington, where the only birds she ever saw were seagulls.

Those early memories of summers in Dunedin have remained with Reilly, who continued to feel drawn to birds as she grew older. Over time birds and bird motifs began to appear in her paintings, especially birds in flight, which to Reilly signified a soaring of spirit, an uplift and a sense of joy.

But they have also carried messages of threat to habitats and the importance of conservation efforts to halt the decline in native populations.

With her husband, painter Max Podstolski, she formed the Primitive Bird Group in 2001, and the pair held solo and joint exhibitions under this banner empowering and supporting each other.

‘‘It steadily grew from there, as more work sold we were able to put money back into conservation projects where we were able to manage it. We made a conscious effort to support the habitats of the birds which inspired our works.’’

That has continued through to this day as Reilly, who lived in Christchurch for 42 years, moved to Doctors Point nine years ago. Unfortunately, her husband died just as they were about to move south, leaving Reilly to take on the adventure by herself.

‘‘I’ve always loved Dunedin and felt more comfortable here. When we first drove along Doctors Point road I loved the feel of the place, a few years later we bought a place.’’

Living so close to Orokonui Ecosanctuary has enabled Reilly to continue her advocacy work, which began when she joined the Banks Peninsula Conservation Trust’s Tui Restoration Project many years ago. That work inspired a whole new series of paintings.

She had the opportunity to go as part of the tūī capture team to Maud Island in the Marlborough Sounds in 2010 to help with capturing tūī for relocation to Hinewai Reserve behind Akaroa. It was a massively nerve-wracking experience for her to escort the 29 tūī in cardboard boxes on a float plane to Akaroa Harbour.

Another experience which had a major impact on her work was an opportunity to join a Heritage Expeditions trip in 2021 to the Subantarctic Islands.

‘‘Seeing the devastation first hand from predators released on to these islands, from wild pigs to mice, and how little of the original fauna is left, it was such a rich seam of inspiration.’’

Over the years she found another way to support conservation through her work being used for prints that trusts could sell to raise funds. She also lent her work to landscape calendars and greeting cards.

‘‘This is my way of raising awareness and recognising local birds and environments.’’

More than a million images of her work have gone out into the world since 2004 and Reilly often gets emails from people overseas who have seen or received one of her cards and want to buy a work.

She also sees it as a way for people to have a piece of her work that might not otherwise get the opportunity. Even though she paints about 20 works a year she finds she struggles to keep up with demand.

Over the years she has had more than 34 solo shows but has only exhibited once in Dunedin, in 2012. Her most recent exhibition, late last year at Little River Gallery on Banks Peninsula, showed paintings inspired by a trip to Stewart Island when she travelled down to the southeastern part of the island to explore the coastline and old ports that still exist down there.

‘‘How much devastation has happened conservation-wise in Stewart Island, with the white-tailed deer [that] have eaten through all the undergrowth of the forests. So there's just mainly crown fern left because they don't like eating that. And then the wild cats and together they've sort of devastated things.’’

While her move south was to be a retirement of sorts, Reilly still heads into the studio every day to paint. It is something she has felt the urge to do since she was a young child. As she was growing up she used her pocket money to buy books on artists such as Chagall, Henri Rousseau, Picasso, Monet and others. She was also inspired by New Zealand artists Rita Angus, Colin McCahon and Robin White.

‘‘I always wanted to be a painter.’’

But at the urging of her parents she headed to university to get a ‘‘good’’ degree but still painted between classes and studying. She met her husband at that time, who urged her to follow her painting, and held her first exhibition of portraits and landscapes with six other emerging artists in 1976.

‘‘I’ve been passionate about it ever since. I’ve always painted. I have this unexplained need to be working. If I don’t life feels flat.’’

Soon after she followed Podstolski to the South Island, the couple aiming to find a cheap home and become ‘‘real painters’’.

After a road trip they settled in Christchurch where they married in 1976 and continued painting.

They held exhibitions in Wellington, which encouraged them to keep painting, although both had ‘‘day’’ jobs to pay the bills. Podstolski became a librarian and Reilly worked as a Montessori teacher. They also had two sons.

The pair, who had separate studios in their home, inspired each other in their work over the years. In 2008, Reilly returned to fulltime painting, finding the juggle of work and painting overwhelming. It was not the ideal time given the state of the economy then but proved to be the right step as her work sold as soon as a show would open.

Over time, Reilly left behind her experimental abstract phase and her painting became more organic before morphing into more recognisable plant and landscape forms and to what her work features today, which is inspired by birds and nature.

‘‘I think of my paintings as being a little bit from a dream time of some sort. So they're not 100% based in reality. They're more a romantic view of things.’’

Her paintings always have a pop of colour in them, sometimes it is very subtle other times not, reflecting New Zealand’s native fauna.

‘‘So if I was trying to be just purely realistic, then you'd stick to the ordinary colours of the bush. But in my painting, if you look up close, there's a whole lot of colour going on. Blues and reds and things in amongst the greens or hot pinks or bursts of orange. It’s something I really enjoy delving into.’’

It means when she is out in nature Reilly takes time to stop and listen to the birds and take notice of the plants, whether it is a plant in full bloom, or its petals scattered on a walking track.

‘‘In New Zealand, plants are definitely discreet in the way that they present themselves. And I probably take that and run with it a wee bit more.’’

On her trip to Stewart Island Reilly was lucky enough to be there when it was a mast year, which only happens every eight years, so the rata was in full bloom and the kamahi was just finishing .

‘‘That just blew my socks off, actually. And just all the colours, you know, not just red like pohutakawa, but deep oranges and sort of cerisey deep reds and then bright, bright reds. All these trees all sort of mixed in and just flaming away in the bush was mind-blowing.’’

The experiences she has had in wild places are stored away as ‘‘seeds’’ of inspiration which she brings out to work on. For the past six or seven years Reilly has worked to an area or theme, picking a different one each year.

‘‘I feel like I walk around with all these seeds of ideas that have come from experiences that may go back, you know, a couple of years. They may go back 10 years. They may go back longer. But it's that building a storehouse of ideas, which then feeds into my constant creativity. So I'm never short of things that I want to explore in the studio, because I've got the storehouse.’’

This year, her 50th exhibiting, Reilly has chosen a slightly different path, going where she wants to go so she will be revisiting some of the ‘‘little seeds’’ she has been carrying around and paintings she has wanted to do but did not fit at the time.

‘‘I just thought let’s just treat yourself, so this is going to be a more diverse collection of probably South Island-based themes.’’

Reilly continues to juggle her own work with commissions which keep coming in even though it may take two or three years before she can get to it, as well as a special work to celebrate Banks Peninsula Trust’s 25th anniversary and a fundraising show in Christchurch to help eradicate pests on the Subantarctic Islands.