Successful Christmas Exhibition

We sold paintings, silkscreen prints and prints, and limited edition prints are winging their way around the world to Denmark and Ireland, from the Christmas exhibition opening. There will be eight new paintings on our website tomorrow and two new drawings. Dad doesn't put all of his paintings on line. Remember that the Artfind calendar out around New Zealand has Marikihau (Mermaid) on it. We have beautiful new art cards around New Zealand. Look out for them.

Gallery Christmas Party in Four Days

We are all very busy preparing for the Christmas Party. Don't forget that the Art Find calendar is out all around New Zealand, and dad has Marakihau for the month of May. He has art cards all around New Zealand now also. Not only does dad have some beautiful new paintings and drawings, but he has some exquisite coloured sketches being shown at the opening for the first time.

Christmas Blog

We are having our Christmas Party on 12 December. Dad is working hard as always, finishing off some paintings for it. I always enjoy the opportunity of talking to lots of people. On another subject, we are getting travellers in from all over the world at the moment. Yesterday we had our first people in from Namibia.

Dawn Arrival and Parnell Market Day

Dad has just finished "Dawn Arrival". He used to sit on his mother's lap when he was little, when she was sitting on one of the boulders. They had a family farm at Oamaru. We had a terrific market day on Saturday here at Parnell. There were 20,000 people through. We sold some prints and a painting.

Dad's Paintings For Auckland Art Week

Dad is finishing off some paintings for his "Real New Zealand Exhibition" for the first ever Auckland Art Week 2010. The art week is organised by the NZ Contemporary Arts Trust. There is going to be a really interesting programme from 4-15 November. There will be all sorts of different exhibitions, programmes and surprises all over Auckland.

Art Prints and the Coffee Club

The first of dad's large art prints are out for $98.50 each. We have had a fantastic response but can hardly hear ourselves think. They are building The Coffee Club upstairs, replacing Starbucks. It will be great when it is finished.

Additions to our Gallery

There have been some recent stands added to our gallery, which take up the whole of the middle of our gallery. Dad made them by hand. It is the first time that people can see a proper representation of dad's work. People are browsing through and looking at the prints, block-mounted prints small and large, silk screen prints, drawings, small paintings. Dad's going to have new posters of his work in here by the weekend.

I Remember

We are getting dad's Fox Glacier series prints made and also prints from his previous paintings.

One of the prints will be "I Remember". It's a beautiful painting of freishas with dad's wallpaper background. He painted it when his mother was dying with alzheimers. She died at 57 years. The collector who bought the painting a few years ago for $10,000 recently had it valued at Dunbar Sloan auctions in Wellington. It was valued at $36,000.

Dad and Greenpeace

Bunny McDiarmid, the CEO of Greenpeace, came into the gallery and asked if dad would donate a painting for the Greenpeace art auction, through Webbs auction house, for an art auction at the end of October, to raise money for the ship The Rainbow Warrior 3. Dad is giving them two framed limited edition of 10 giclee prints, which directly relates to Greenpeace. The Whale Rider painting (Returning Heroes) and Spiritual Journey, which is the rebirth of a waka. At Greenpeace they are very grateful and excited to have dad on board. They said it will attract other top artists.

Gallery Buzz

There has been a buzz in the gallery since the exhibition. We are busy sending limited edition prints overseas, and we are following through on other things. Meanwhile dad is going flat out on his new painting. I'll tell you about it next time.

I love it when dad's artist friends come into the gallery. The other day two artists came in at the same time - Mark Cross, who spends most of his time in Niue, has just sold a beautiful big Pacific
Island painting to a firm at the bottom of Parnell Rise for $60,000.

Gordon Howard was also in. Gordon was resident at the Lion Park in Whangarei. He paints the big cats and other African wildlife.

3rd Birthday Exhibition

Yippee it was fantastic. A great time was had by all. Everybody was blown away by the new paintings and giclee prints. An hour before the opening dad was still varnishing the prints in the gallery. The response was tremendous and everyone really enjoyed talking to each other. The limited edition prints, which look just like the paintings, are winging their way around the world. People are saying that it's amazing that you can get a Pankhurst of that quality for $2000. My brother Andre and his girlfriend Nikki were looking after everyone with the drink and the food.

Exhibition Opening Coming Up

Dad is up from 5AM to midnight in the gallery, cutting, stretching and varnishing his limited edition gislee prints, and organising other things for the opening on Sunday, and we have had a tremendous response from all over the world from our mailout.

Tuturu Aotearoa (The Real New Zealand) Painting Finished

Dad finally finished the painting Tuturu Aotearoa (The Real New Zealand), after six months work. The photo of me for blogspot has this painting in progress in the background. Varnished in the gallery, the painting looks fantastic. It is going to be the centre-piece for our exhibition opening on Sunday, the 8th of August.

We are getting more people through the gallery now that Starbucks has closed, as people can see our signs more clearly. It was the first Starbucks in New Zealand. Recently we have had a lot of tourists through from Australia and the UK.

Todd Corporation Art Collection

Dad received a book from John Todd of the Todd Corporation Art Collection. His painting "Something to Hide" is part of the collection. Wellington art dealer Peter McLeavy was the consultant for the Todd collection, and in 1975 he bought the painting on behalf of Todd Motors. Some of the other artists in the collection are Colin McCahon, Robert Ellis, Don Binney, Michael Smither, Pat Hanly, Stanley Palmer and other New Zealand leading artists. Dad knew and has exhibited with the artists in the catalogue so it is good to be in the collection with them.

A close shave

After work a few days ago I was running around Seaside Park coming onto dark. A helicopter was circling around the park. I did not think much about it. Then an undercover police car turned up. I didn't have much to think about this either. There were some other people around, including kids, all playing in the park and minding their own business about the helicopter and the policeman. It was now pitch dark as I began my final lap. I was nearing the end of it when mum yelled out, very upset, "run Matt". I ran to the car and jumped in. It was already moving. I looked around and suddenly another few police cars were on the scene. They herded everyone towards the end of the park. We were not allowed to leave at all. Mum had asked the police if it was still safe for me to run, and the answer was no. It was a tense situation. We did not feel safe and we had no idea what was going on as we sat in our cars in the corner. It could have been anything. An armed person on the loose? An escaped prisoner? It was an anxious time. Finally the police came and told us what the problem was. There was an unexploded bomb in a car on the side of the park. The bomb was on the right hand side of the road, and we were to drive on the left hand side of the road as fast as we could and not stop. We did this, tense all the way. In doing so we shot past thirteen police cars, an ambulance, the bomb squad and TV1 and TV3 news cameras, as well as a large bunch of locals and police dogs. Now we were safe. At home, I reflected on the fact that I have had some serious near death experiences, much more serious than this. Dad has too, and this has had a big influence on his art. I will talk about these at a later date.

Queens Birthday Weekend

Holiday weekends are a special time in the gallery for us because we are the only gallery open on the day of the holiday. We see all sorts of different people. The first long weekend after we opened, Labour Day, October 2007, a lovely woman from Sydney walked up from Queen Street to find we were the only gallery open and bought the first of dad's Maori paintings, "Our Time", as well as prints and drawings. "Our Time" is Pukaki, the great Maori chief from Ngati Whakaue Rotorua, lying in the sand dunes. He was carved around 1820 and has been returned to his home in Rotorua.

The Gallery Today

For the first time ever we have had a young woman traveller in from Lithuania. She was an architect who said that what made New Zealand different from the rest of the world was our Maori culture especially the art and carving. So she loved dad's work. We see all kinds of creative people in the gallery. We had a Maori poet in today and a Tongan graphic design teacher who is coming back to talk to dad. Dad gives help and advice to artists all the time.

The Artist's Son

Many interesting things happen in the life of my father and our gallery and that has propelled me to start writing a blog. We have all sorts of people coming into the gallery from NZ and all over the world, and these people are an essential part of our life and work, and we enjoy meeting everyone from all over the world. Dad's at home working on a beautiful and detailed forest painting that he has been working on for four months now, and we can't wait for him to finish it. We would love to hear from friends and new people from around the world.