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RADIANT VISTAS: THE PAINTINGS OF PETER CARSON

By the gate into the wild little field I always pause as if there were something there for me, waiting to be perceived, gathered and hallowed.  Margiad Evans

Peter Carson’s paintings are the expression of a searching, deeply-felt response to the spirit of the land in which he lives. His work is strongly regionalist, securely embedded in the landscapes of the South Island, and to the casual observer it might appear somewhat narrow in focus. But that would be a superficial view. What defines these paintings is the way in which the local landscape has been transformed by the imagination to create an intense, spiritual resonance. The tawny, brightly-lit hills swelling above the sheltered fields and farmhouses of valley and plain, are mysterious presences invoking feelings of awe and delight. Carson has absorbed Samuel Palmer’s dictum, ‘Bits of Nature are generally much improved by being received into the soul,’ and applied it to his own native ground through his painterly explorations of light.

As a boy growing up on his parents’ market garden on the outskirts of Christchurch, Carson was sensitive to the mysterious effects of light on the natural world. Referring to this period of his life in an unpublished essay, he tells of discovering the magical way light illumined and beautified common objects, like a belt of shelter trees, the tops of which developed haloes of intense brightness in the setting sun. He saw how moonlight made dry thistles spectral, transfigured into ‘luminous shapes of absorbed lights’; and how spider webs sparkled and flashed in the early morning sun as if from their own independent source of light. The simple progress of the day from dawn till night became the object of the greatest fascination. ‘The passing of time with its alteration of light completely governed my imagination.’

These early impressions were the seed experiences that were to form the basis of Carson’s art. He was fortunate, early on in his career, to discover the visionary paintings of William Blake’s protege, Samuel Palmer with their intense, secretive twilights and celestial moons ‘walking in brightness among innumerable islands of light’, as Palmer described them in one of his sketchbooks. These, along with the works of Rembrandt and Van Gogh provided important imaginative signposts, setting him on his way.
 Carson began painting at the age of sixteen, and throughout his career, he has kept to a disciplined routine, painting for several hours every afternoon. His first ‘studio’ was a small draughty shed, replaced eventually by a more spacious sleep-out. Both were unencumbered by furniture: he has always preferred to paint kneeling on the ground. Here, working in pastel, charcoal, pen-and-ink and oils, Carson has produced over the years a large body of paintings and drawings, celebrating what is in essence a religious vision of the natural world.

Although the majority of Carson’s landscapes are empty of human figures,  Man’s footprint is visible everywhere in the sequestered homesteads, ripening wheat, and the great, gleaming hay bales transformed by the nor’west light into monolithic symbols of divine largesse. In many of the paintings, layer after layer of paint has been added to produce the more-than-earthly light filling the landscape, recalling the poet Henry Vaughan’s memorable line, ‘Bright shoots of everlastingness.’

Harold Hitchcock, another painter absorbed by the power of light, has written: ‘The artist must cut across the spirit of the age … his function is to follow the unmistakable voice within.’ Carson has intuitively followed this advice throughout his career, producing paintings that are a celebration, an exuberant song of praise. Against all the odds, they show that it is still possible in our own place, and time, to renew that ancient dream of the Garden, where Man and Nature are envisioned coexisting in sanctified harmony. In bypassing the secular dogmas of our time, Peter Carson has chosen to reaffirm the spiritual dimension of art through the expression of a vision uniquely his own.
Anthony Holcroft.

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Gallery:

Peter Adsett
Mark Braunias
Peter Carson
Stephen Clarke
Allen Cox
Michael Dell
Andrew Drummond
Michael Hamblett
Jeffrey Harris
Roger Hickin
Maree Horner
Kathryn Madill
Michael Reed
Zina Swanson
Philip Trusttum

Upcoming Exhibitions:

Guy Frederick
21 Oct - 15 Nov

Kathryn Madill
25 Nov - 20 Dec