Robin White

"I see myself as a recorder of the reality of the situation…what I paint depends on where I am…I don't go around just looking for beautiful hills – my work arises out of the situation I am in". – Robin White

Robin White graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts in 1967, and in 1982 went to Kiribati with her family, where she remained for seventeen years.

Deeply influenced by her commitment to the Ba'Hai faith, White's work displays a fundamental concern for people and locality, "...when I'm contemplating this land…I am conscious of what I feel to be the Creator's hand. The beauty of it all, the infinite variety, what a miracle it is! These are the things that really move me and I hope that some of this respect for the land comes through in my paintings".

Michael Dunn describes the strong focus on printmaking by Robin White, one of New Zealand's leading contemporary painters and printmakers:

"I find the clarity of Robin White's vision her most remarkable quality as an artist. Perhaps it is the discipline of working with the stencils used for screen-printing which has given her such powers of analysis and concentration. It is as if we normally see indistinctly until her pictures provide the optical aid to 'correct' our blurred perception of things. Each shape is precise, each line as crisp and sharp as a razor's edge. As in a moonscape, there is no atmospheric softening to ease the transition from land to sky.

Despite their 'realistic' subjects Robin White's pictures are highly abstract in construction. She is much aware of the flat nature of the picture-plane which she preserves at all costs. Perspective and fore-shortening deny the diagrammatic quality she constantly seeks: consequently the buildings often appear front-on, hill and landscape forms in her characteristic silhouette."

"I don't feel like a colonist. My family has been here for many generations-my father's lineage goes right back to the Maori and my mother's goes back to the first settlers in the Bay of Plenty area. I really do feel that this is my country. I've got no particular interest in any other artist heritage and I don't feel I owe anything to what's happened in Britain, America, France or Italy." – Robin White

Source: Ferner Galleries