PHOTO
Queenstown painter Pamela Wilson is one of only 300 artists from around the world to be chosen to exhibit at a contemporary art show in Italy.
In a surprising turn of events for the Jack’s Point resident, her oil painting Bayonet Peak was selected for the Chianciano Biennale in Tuscany.
The two-week exhibition opened at the Chianciano Art Museum on Saturday.
Held since 2009, the exhibition aims to provide a platform for artists outside the traditional art-world establishment.
Wilson, who works as a trauma therapist in Queenstown, tells Mountain Scene she received an email from the organisers earlier this year inviting her to register her interest.
She did so, thinking it was “probably a scam”, and forgot all about it until she got a reply asking her to submit a painting.
“Then sometime in May I found an email, which I’d missed, saying I’d been selected and they wanted me to send my painting to them.”
By then she’d already planned a painting trip to Australia’s remote Kimberley region — from which she’s just returned — which meant she couldn’t go to Italy to see the exhibition for herself.
“It would’ve been really lovely to have gone, but the other trip had been planned.”
Her painting depicts one of her favourite mountains, Bayonet Peaks, a jagged ridge line running between Cecil Peak and Halfway Bay stations that’s visible from her home.
She’s named it the singular ‘Bayonet Peak’ because it depicts the view from Homestead Bay, from where it looks like a single mountain.
Wilson says she’s a lifelong painter who loves portraiture and landscapes.
Her work’s been exhibited at various events in the Queenstown Lakes and Central Otago for more than two decades.
