Love of art constant in a changing landscape
BY ANGELA CROMPTON
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The Marlborough Art Society will celebrate its 50th anniversary on August 30 next year. To ensure the highs and lows of those 50 years are accurately recorded, members are invited to a recollections session at the art society rooms next Thursday. Founding member Lorna Clarke recounts some of her memories.
Open-air painting sessions were a regular event for early members of the Marlborough Art Society.
Founding member and now life member of the society Lorna Clarke says some of her works have become quite historic, depicting scenes of now-vanished Marlborough landscapes.
One unnamed work is of the first grapevine planted on a Rapaura Rd property by Penfold Wines. The lone plant is surrounded by pasture, a far cry from the scene today, when vineyards spread across most of the Wairau Plain.
Other open-air sessions Clarke attended included a sitting one cold winter's day outside the newly built Marlborough District Council building. Her sketch of it had included a car parked outside, an element her daughter persuaded her to leave out in the final painting. Clarke now regrets its omission, saying it would have given the picture a time frame.
"We did an awful lot of drawing. We would take our lunch and sit in the paddock and sketch or paint."
She is now 86 and says art has been always been important to her.
"Right from a child, I was always drawing. A friend of my father had been to art school and he used to give me praise. That's encouraging as a child."
The family had moved to Blenheim by the time Clarke was 11, and when she went to college, she was included in a Saturday art class for a few select students.
She never considered going to art school for tertiary study, however. Instead, she got a job as a window dresser at McKenzies department store, then moved to Masterton to stay with a friend during World War II and trained as a hairdresser.
When Clarke married returned serviceman Bruce Clarke, they moved back to Blenheim, where she bought the Vogue hairdressing salon. She retained her love for painting and drawing, however, and when there was talk about starting an art society in Marlborough, she jumped at the chance to be a part of it.
She remembers the first exhibitions the society held featured a large abstract work by society member John (JS) Parker.
"He did it six-foot something, and as you walked in the door, that's what you saw first. It was very exciting. Our first exhibition and the public saw this big painting, probably the first abstract they had seen in Blenheim, and it created quite a sensation."
After that, regular exhibitions were held. "Marlborough had a lot of good artists," she said. "They formed a group of artists in Seddon and they belonged to the art society in town too."
Clarke remains active in the society and says she is currently being challenged in a mixed-media group, working in abstracts.
A Chinese painting group she is in is fun too, and she applies the simplicity of that style to birthday and Christmas cards she makes for family members.
As one of the more senior members of the society, Clarke judges it to be in good health and treasures her ongoing association with it.
"I enjoy the company and I enjoy the classes. You are always learning with art," she says.
- The Marlborough Express
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