Artist Profile
Bruce Hunt
Born in Wellington in 1964, Bruce Hunt was educated at Wellington College and Victoria University. He has been a fulltime artist since 1983 and has been exhibited extensively throughout New Zealand. As a studio painter he travels widely in pursuit of visual information but is drawn back again and again to those few special locations that are the vital inspiration to his work. He presently resides back in Dunedin within reach of the hinterland that has been the focus of his work for nearly 3 decades
His ‘uneasy’ relationship with the landscape, and his emotional response to it remain the foundation of his work. While Hunts images are based on specific places they evoke not document. The direction of his approach has been to ‘sieve’ the landscape of ‘unruly’ elements and refine down each image until the focus of the work becomes the essence of mood and atmosphere, light and tone. The profound affects of light are an ongoing preoccupation in Hunts landscapes. Painted with skill and subtlety, the paintings are constructed with layer upon layer of pigment using a free fluid technique until the final painting is an amalgam of these many layers of vivid under painting, impatient brushwork followed by formalisation and focus.
Artists Statements
My work continues to evolve from an interaction with the patterns of the landscape of Central Otago. My fuel is the anticipation and discovery of new territories and a seasoned familiarity of places returned to again and again. In documenting with paint that inland sea of tussock uplands, traversed by the historic Dunstan Trail, I am constantly reminded of the brave spirit of those who forged pathways in pursuit of dreams long before me.
I would like these trails to remain man's only mark upon this unique landscape.
Bruce Hunt 2007
Light has always been vital to my work. To me it is about transition and change. It transforms the character and form of the landscape. It distorts and obscures, it clarifies and sharpens. It excites my sense of the abstract- that glimpse that is the seed of a painting.
There are places I am compelled to return to in my mind and to paint over and over. The Lindis, Danseys Pass, Erewhon, Lake Heron and Red Lagoon in the Mackenzie Basin. In the North, Muriwai and Ninety Mile Beach. They are 'pockets' within powerful and expansive surrounds. They conceal great mystery from me within their layers and folds and I find I am constantly searching to uncover the essence of these places. They are 'thick' with atmosphere.
My relationship in particular with these Southern landscapes is an un-easy one. I tread the ridgelines and valley floors. I do so tentatively. I feel a profound excitement and a fair dose of apprehension when I venture deep into these hills.
I am not sure if it is the overwhelming scale and isolation, the sense of struggle of those who 'broke in' this land or the sculptured forms created by immense spans of history and seasonal extremes. Maybe it's the fleeting subtleties of light or the vast reclining forms designed by nature that excites my sense of design and hence my intrinsic need to paint. Whatever the reasons, to me as a painter there is an aura of mystery of this land- of what lies beneath the obvious beauty- of what lurks within the shadows and valleys, those dark places that punctuate the face of the land.
I work in the studio from an accumulation of information both of memory and recorded. Spare surfaces and the studio floor are most often strewn with sketches, watercolours and photographs.
With many broad washes of acrylic and oil paint - I add and subtract - I distort and focus. The process of pushing paint around a canvas is a physical and technical expression that holds enormous importance to me and has never become second nature. It is always a struggle.
As a realist it is my function not simply to record but to evoke, to convey my presence via my emotional response to my subject. It is my experience that may reveal itself to an audience.
Bruce Hunt 2004
