Finnis Road is Karl Maughan’s latest exhibition, featuring six large scale and eight smaller paintings.
Waitaki (2015) is a major work in every sense of that word. Maughan’s remarkable ability to depict the landscaped garden as a venue, a journey in progress, as a symphony of colour and light is evidenced in this commanding, yet delicate painting.
Maughan has been widely acclaimed as an artist for many things. Broken Axe (2015) and Kaiwhara (2015) are powerful examples of his profound ability to take the viewer inside the garden, to wrap them up in its fact and emotional reality.
Athenree (2015), Katikati (2015) and Waikino (2015) are different, almost classical in composition, with sensations of being surrounded by overhead trees and enclosed either side with a small sunlit pathway beckoning. To state these are very beautiful, successful paintings is the very least of it.
The exhibition is completed with eight smaller paintings which are noticeably more abstract in character when viewed up close (with each brushstroke sitting side by side). But when viewed at a little distance (from across a room) these coalesce to being much more than merely suggestions: they become compellingly real, profuse, and superbly modelled works.