Bill Sutton 'Landscape Synthesis: Second Series'

“A good piece of music is like a good painting. I wish I could paint like a Bach fugue, when you throw pieces of music at each other – they argue and resolve it. That’s what you do in a painting – areas of dark, areas of light, narrow passages, broad passages, pale and tinted and so on. And they discuss it among themselves on the canvas, and when they are resolved, the painting is finished.”

— Bill Sutton¹

Bill Sutton is best-known for his distinctive paintings of the Canterbury landscape. Many of his works, including Dry September from 1949 and Nor’wester in the Cemetery from 1950 have become iconic examples of New Zealand Regionalist painting from the mid-twentieth century.² These technically accomplished works depict the plains and mountains of New Zealand’s mainland in a bold and singular style. Yet they also tap into an emergent cultural discourse of the time. Many artists, particularly those based in Canterbury, sought to create a distinctive voice for New Zealand art. Colin McCahon, Rita Angus, and Doris Lusk and many others were alongside Sutton in this pursuit.

While Sutton’s mid-century landscape works remain an inextricable part of the New Zealand art cannon, his later Landscape Synthesis paintings demonstrate a different aspect of his artistic vision. These works share some similarities in palette, the rich ochres and blue grey tones evoking the Canterbury Plains
and open skies above. Yet, they break up the landscape, operating in a mode of
painting that is more interpretive than depictive, edging towards abstraction.

This pair of works, both dated 1982, are from Sutton’s second series of Landscape Synthesis works. They share similarities in style, palette, and composition. Strong horizontal lines shift the register from a faithful rendering of landscape into a partially-abstracted, kaleidoscopic view of the distinctive Canterbury environment. One can still interpret patches of open sky, fragments of clouds, glimpses of the contours of hills and mountain ranges, but they are treated as elements of the composition rather than the main focus of the work. In this inventive arrangement of recognisable elements, Sutton has created a pair of paintings that showcase his exceptional compositional abilities along with his ongoing innovation.

The two works are strikingly similar, almost reading as a diptych. Of equal dimensions, both feature gestural brush strokes that convey the dynamic energy of an elemental environment – brisk winds, billowing rainclouds, and wide-open spaces. Both have a pronounced linear composition, fragmenting the landscape. Yet, each is resolved as a standalone piece. One features more of the grey white tones referencing clouds and skies, the other more of the golden tones of the plains. Each is a singular expression of the artist’s particular vision – painting that references a specific place but is more than a simple representation.

Sutton produced a rich body of work in his lifetime. In the nearly two and a half decades since his passing, his standing as an artist of national significance has only increased. He was a proud South Islander, deeply dedicated to painting and an influential teacher and mentor to younger artists. Sutton’s reputation as one of the leading Regionalist artists is firmly established. In recent years, works from the later stages of his career, particularly his Landscape Synthesis works, have gained greater recognition. This pair of works from the later stages of his career show an artist that kept looking to reinvent his ways of working and interpreting the Canterbury environment.

1 Liz Grant, Bill Sutton Interview with Liz Grant. Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, 1998.
https://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/multimedia/artistinterviews/w-a-sutton. 0:01–0:33.

2 These works are held respectively in the collections of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.