Landscapes: Dick Frizzell and Karl Maughan

Considered two of New Zealand’s most prominent living artists, close friends Karl Maughan and Dick Frizzell have joined forces once again. Their sold out 1998 joint exhibition aptly titled Landscapes will be revisited 20 years later as both artists draw on the New Zealand landscape as a mutual point of inspiration. It is what Frizzell calls “The reunion tour …getting the band back together”.

Karl Maughan’s name has become synonymous with landscape painting and his works are highly sought after by public and private collectors. His most recent works are saturated with colour, Maughan’s thick, impasto technique giving the works a three-dimensional effect, as if the flora and fauna were bursting from the canvas.

Dick Frizzell traverses through genres more so than most artists, and he does so with an assured confidence and undeniable skill. Reflecting on the 1998 exhibition in Dick Frizzell: The Painter, he states, “It took a bit of doing. Quite apart from the huge physical demands of these monsters it felt a bit like cheating – backsliding […] But my god, it felt fantastic when they finally got onto the wall! Karl buzzing away on one side of the gallery and me a little more ponderous on the other.”

On these recent works Frizzell explains: “My landscapes occupy a special place in my affections because they define, more than any other of my endeavours, the most solid manifestation of my philosophy. Both the subjects and their manner of representation are chosen to emphasise my eternally optimistic faith in the physical universe that I believe we are ultimately destined to define. I hope…through my piles of hills, stumps, trees and land…to literally convey ‘the gravity of the situation’.”