The sights and scenes along Waimarama road are more than familiar to those who have explored this iconic route. None more so than to Josh Lancaster.
His second exhibition of 11 new paintings documenting this well-travelled path opens at Muse Gallery on Mother’s Day, following his last year’s sell out show.
Josh graduated from Massey University School of design with first-class honours in 2000. Named as NZ Young Creative of the Year in 2005, he represented our country at the Cannes Young Lions before embarking on an illustrious highly-awarded advertising career working on some of our favourite and most iconic brands.
All the comfortable accoutrements which accompany such advertising success however could not dim the desire to paint.
So, in 2015 he threw it in and moved to Hawke’s Bay to do just that. With a home studio in Havelock North he has created some of the most stunning landscapes which “capture the geography of the heart” – the places those of us who are lucky enough to call Hawke’s Bay home regard as ‘ours’; depictions of scenes we know so well, the ones which make the connection through a shared memory of space known to us.
He explains his attachment to this iconic scenario. “It’s a road we’ve driven a million times on the way to the beach. Each bridge, shed, and old tree appears on the unfolding road as an old friend we are always pleased to see again. Some of the scenes along the way are significant; some of them not. But they are all iconic landscapes, landmarks, and buildings that we have attached our own story to. There are places we know as familiar corners on our everyday journeys – little vistas etched into the hearts of locals, or out-of-towners on their summer pilgrimage to their beach.
“I like painting the things least painted: places and scenes that, until we see it as a painting, we might not realise just how attached to it we are. Places that may not be traditionally beautiful, but perhaps wonderfully familiar – reminding us of the places we go with the people we love.”
Muse Gallery
5 Havelock Rd. Havelock North
May 8th – June 4, 2022.