A road trip from Arrowtown to Glenorchy turned into a epiphany about art and ancestors for one of New Zealand's leading arts commentators.
Hamish Keith OBE, of Auckland, linked the tour he and wife Ngila Dickson ONZM enjoyed on Friday to an individual's relationship with art, in his packed public lecture, in Dorothy Brown's Cinema, in Arrowtown, on Friday night.
Mr Keith said that observing the names of two uncles on the Glenorchy war memorial and his recollection of his ancestors once living in Arcadia - his grandfather, a chairman of a council in the 1890s, and his great-grandfather, who got drunk and drowned off the wharf next to the Glenorchy Hotel - had made him see the likes of Mt Earnslaw in a different light.
"A landscape I had never seen before became part of my personal history and that's what we expect from art," he told the audience.
Having a one-on-one conversation with an artwork was the link between an artist, who created to explain the inexplicable, and the viewer, who had an obligation to ask questions, he said.
"All art doesn't have to be great, but it does have to have something to say.
"Artists become great when they anticipate what we need," he said.
Asked at what point did random spots and lines on a canvas become art, Mr Keith said one way to determine was the moment when the image stopped being paint and engaged the imagination.
The commentator, writer, television producer and art curator was invited to give his thoughts on the state of the arts in New Zealand and put into context five new pieces by prominent artist Tony Lane, of Auckland.
Mr Keith told the Queenstown Times good painters could be found around the country, not just in the major centres, and were supported by a "brilliant" range of dealer-galleries.
"The visual arts are the healthiest of all the arts simply because they have less support.
They've had to make their own way in the world and connect with their own audiences.
"That's been one of the remarkable stories of the last 50 or so years in New Zealand, a very vigorous arts scene and one quite comparable with anywhere else."
The exhibition "Tony Lane: Breathe" runs in the Nadene Milne Gallery, in Arrowtown, until May 1.
