Monterey Art Gallery

My first proper outing to an art gallery, my apologies for not doing this earlier.

I was scratching my head as to how I was going to find an art gallery around my local area of Howick and google was proven to be my friend. It found the Monterey Art Gallery which seemed promising. They have a nice little website (www.montereyartgallery.co.nz) which I had a look around.

When I arrived the other day at the gallery I was confronted by some art they had on display by a lady named Crispin Korschen (www.crispinkorschen.co.nz). Her art caught my eye because it seemed very simple and almost childish. Most of her art looks to consist of two main colours for her landscape and/or background on which she has a small group of characters or a single character acting something out. Every piece of her art however has a tiny message written somewhere on the canvas which relates to the character or the actions on the picture which I find helps describe to the viewer what message she is trying to bring across. As you stand back and admire her art she draws you in as you start to look at the more detailed parts and find these messages. I find her style of drawing very beautiful because even with the elongation (is that a word?) of her characters she has put a careful amount of detail into the characters which shows she has a very big talent for detail using what looks like a fine pin type brush, however she decides to proportion these characters in weird and wonderful ways.

Apart from the work displayed by Crisin Korschen there were some other pieces which mainly consisted of vases and pots and mixed media most of which had some type of New Zealand or Maori relation. Dont get me wrong now, I thing some of these pieces are quite dramatic or beautiful to look at but a lot of art done in a New Zealand or Maori theme does not seem to interest me as much as most art. One piece I spent some time staring at was a large mixed media piece which was strapped with rusted barbed wire and had a wooden hair comb item forced into the middle of this 'slab' which I could only describe as white stone like Oamaru stone or something similar which I got the chance to work on while I was at high school.

I think a lot of these pieces and a lot of pieces I have not described here have unique stories or symbolism the artist wishes to sneak into viewers minds on a subliminal level however for me that probably takes more time and effort to pick up on. The art is beautiful to my eyes and not really my mind, for now at least.