Work by Claire Deighton & Raewyn Smith

The boards for these paintings came from a man in Kohukohu who had rescued them from a demolished house then stored them in his shed for 20 years intending to use them in the house he has just finished building.

In preparing these beautiful boards for their current life, I first treated them for borer (again), and then I simply looked at them for a few days…

I wanted these works to be a dialogue between my mark making - which is an ongoing response to the physical sensations in the body as effected by environment and mind - and the board’s own raw markings. In this way, the history of the boards and the history of the artist intermingle to create the present which you see before you.

Working in my studio beside the stream and the sheep shelter, I am also influenced by weather, insects and sheep.

These are selected works from ‘The Weather Dancers’, exhibited at Village Arts, Kohukohu 12th April - 1st May, 2008. All works are painted on Australasian woods (predominantly on New Zealand native timbers) and include combinations of acrylic paint, bitumen, faux gold, bole, Hokianga clay and copper. Please contact me if you are interested in any of the unsold works.

The Weather Dancers exhibition is informed by the Japanese dance theatre Body Weather Laboratory, in which movement is inspired by close observation of weather and place. Artist and performer Claire Deighton studied this form of dance, and uses a similar process when painting, translating physical sensation into colour and texture in her work.

The Weather Dancers series is painted on large recycled kauri and rimu boards and includes acrylic paint, local clay and bitumen.

“Recycled timbers are a metaphor for the human body, each having its own history, connected to but separate from the others. In the application and transformation of the surface medium, the pieces become a dynamic interface between internal and external environment.”

Claire says that living in the Hokianga definitely helps her process.

“The elements are more apparent to me here - heat in the summer time, wet (and mud) in the winter, and the constant rhythm of the tides are the best muse I could hope for.”

Go and see The Weather Dancers at Village Arts, Kohukohu. The exhibition, the gallery and the village of Kohukohu are well worth the visit.