Alison Hale | |
|---|---|
 Hale in her Reefton studio | |
| Born | 1955 |
| Nationality | New Zealander |
| Alma mater | University of Otago |
| Known for | Painter |
| Website | alisonhale |
Alison Hale (born 1955) is a New Zealand artist, based in Reefton, known for her depictions of horses and the natural environment.
The youngest of six children, Hale was born and grew up in Westport, on the banks on the Buller River. Horses are a recurring theme in her work, and she was fascinated by them from an early age: "I'd failed miserably at school because I was too busy riding horses!" [1] She recalls as a child catching loose horses in Westport and returning them to their owners so she could get a ride, and biking out to the light horse club with jodhpurs she bought with whitebaiting money. [2] Hale dropped out of school at 15, met a farrier, and went on to have three children with him. [1] At 16 she was working at the Brackenfield Hunt Club in Canterbury, exercising hunt horses, and a year later moved to Māwheraiti with her husband to train horses. [3] She raised her family working in shearing sheds, relief milking, mustering, and general farm work. [4] She continued to ride, competing in showjumping and other equine events.
Hale had drawn from an early age, but failed School Certificate art, even though "it's the only class I ever behaved in at school"; [4] she nevertheless continued drawing after marrying, and began painting with watercolours when her children started school. [1] Her inspiration to begin working in oils came from seeing a reproduction of Constable's The Hay Wain at age 18, in a house the couple had moved into. [1] One of most important influences in her early artistic career was Hokitika landscape painter Brent Trolle, whose weekend Rural Education Programme painting course she attended, and who encouraged her to continue. [3]
In 1992, Hale, then Alison Parker, completed a foundation art history course at Tai Poutini Polytechnic under Evelyn Hewlett, where she was awarded the Fletcher Challenge Scholarship for general excellence. [3] [5] That same year she was able to pass bursary art history in an evening class run by Warren Feeney, then a Greymouth High School art teacher. [3]
With the encouragement of her tutors, she put together a portfolio and in 1993 moved to Dunedin at the age of 38 to study for a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Otago, majoring in painting. [1] [6] She had to leave two of her children back on the West Coast, only seeing them on weekends. [7] In 1995 she was one of two recipients of the Derivan-Art Spectrum Painting Award. [3] She began depicting horses in her art in her third year of her degree, initially hiding her work from her tutor, who said, "If that is where your heart is, paint it.", something she describes as the most valuable advice anybody had ever given her. [2] Horses have remained a major theme in her work ever since: "Working with horses has been an extremely dominant part of my life both physically and emotionally." [1] [8]
On graduating at the end of 1996 Hale moved to Reefton and became a professional artist. [6] In 1998 she opened the Reefton Gallery on Broadway. In November 2010 she was one of a group of five artists (Ruth Vaega, Charley Gray, Michelle Green, and Keith Wills) who opened the Smallbone and Storekeeper galleries on Broadway, named after a former wine and spirit shop. [9] Shared by several artists, the Hale Gallery adjoins the Reefton Gallery. [1] [8]
After working in a studio at the back of the gallery, she moved to the 1873 former Reefton Courthouse building on Bridge Street. [1] This Category I historic courthouse, closed in the early 1970s, had been suffering from leaks and a sinking floor, and was restored with a $103,000 grant in 2000. [10] Hale is part of the artist co-operative the Reefton Design Studio, along with Rachel Fifield, Princess Hart, Sue Bevan, Jean Davison, and Carol Jones, who are attempting to create a space where tourists and locals can watch artists at work. [11] [12]
Hales work often features strong, vibrant images of horses, pioneer men and women, and cattle; the horses in many of her paintings have exaggerated legs, "to create the lengthening feel I love when I ride". [6] She has also painted landscapes of the West Coast and Central Otago. [13] Her favourite artists include Susan Rothenberg and Andrew Wyeth. [4]
Another series depicts native freshwater fishes in their natural habitat, and her concern for their survival. [6] [14] Hale began this series in 2006, after meeting Irish artist Barrie Cooke trout fishing on the Inangahua River near Reefton; she was working on a series of trout paintings at the time, and after the meeting began painting the five whitebait species of the Buller River: īnanga, koaro, and banded, shortjaw, and giant kōkopu. [15] These paintings were exhibited in a joint show, Where Rivers Meet, in the Wearable Arts Museum, Nelson, in 2006, and at the Left Bank Art Gallery, Greymouth, in 2007.
Hale began her career working in oils on canvas or hardwood, occasionally painting in acrylic. [4] Over time she increasingly began painting with oils on glass, making a reversed glass image. She works from imagined images rather than reference photographs, and does not plan compositions in advance. [2]
Hale's painting Nineteen Nineteen, depicting a nine-year-old on trial at the Reefton Courthouse in 1919, won the legal section of the Carruthers and Wetherall Art Awards in Greymouth in 1997. [16] She has twice won first prize in the West Coast and Buller section of the Telecom White Pages Art Award, in 1998 and 2006; her paintings Coming Down from the Clarke and The Biggest Catch of All graced the covers of the telephone books for those years. [17]
The West Coast is a region of New Zealand on the west coast of the South Island that is administered by the West Coast Regional Council, and is known co-officially as Te Tai Poutini. It comprises the territorial authorities of Buller District, Grey District and Westland District. The principal towns are Westport, Greymouth and Hokitika. The region, one of the more remote areas of the country, is also the most sparsely populated. With a population of just 32,000 people, Te Tai Poutini is the least populous region in New Zealand, and it is the only region where the population is declining.
Greymouth is the largest town in the West Coast region in the South Island of New Zealand, and the seat of the Grey District Council. The population of the whole Grey District is 14,100, which accounts for 43% of the West Coast's inhabitants. The Greymouth urban area had an estimated population of 8,310. A large proportion of the District, 65%, is part of the Conservation Estate owned and managed by the Department of Conservation making Greymouth a natural centre for walkers and trampers.
Reefton is a small town in the West Coast region of New Zealand, some 80 km northeast of Greymouth, in the Inangahua River valley. Ahaura is 44 km south-west of Reefton, Inangahua Junction is 34 km to the north, Maruia is 63 km to the east, and the Lewis Pass is 66 km to the south-east.
Inangahua is a small settlement in the northwest of New Zealand's South Island. It consists of three settled areas: Inangahua Junction at the confluence of the Inangahua and Buller Rivers, 34 kilometres (21 mi) north of Reefton and 46 kilometres (29 mi) southeast of Westport; Inagahua Landing, 10 km further up the Inangahua River; and Inangauhua township, 2 km east of the Junction. Murchison is 52 kilometres (32 mi) further east. After the 1968 Inangahua Earthquake, most of the inhabitants left the area or shifted to the township, which is now the population centre and known simply as Inangahua.
Scenicland FM was a New Zealand radio station broadcasting on the West Coast of the South Island.
The Stillwater Ngākawau Line (SNL), formerly the Stillwater–Westport Line (SWL) and the Ngakawau Branch, is a secondary main line, part of New Zealand's national rail network. It runs between Stillwater and Ngakawau via Westport on the West Coast of the South Island. It was one of the longest construction projects in New Zealand's history, with its first section opened in 1889 and the full line completed 1942.
The West Coast Rugby Football Union, formed in 1890, is the official governing body for rugby union in the Westland County, Hokitika Borough and Greymouth Borough districts, located in the West Coast provincial region of New Zealand, and is affiliated to the New Zealand Rugby Football Union. The West Coast RFU provincial representative team, a founding member of the National Provincial Championship, is based in Greymouth. It plays home matches at John Sturgeon Park.
The Buller Rugby Union (BRU) is a rugby union province based in the town of Westport, New Zealand. The Buller provincial boundary also includes other notable towns such as Reefton, Karamea, Granity, Charleston, Punakaiki and Murchison.
Paul Maunder is a film director, playwright and cultural activist from New Zealand. He is best known for his 1979 film of the novel Sons For the Return Home by Albert Wendt, his 1983 play Hemi about the life of James K. Baxter, and his work in community-based theatre.
The 1927 New Zealand rugby league season was the 20th season of rugby league that had been played in New Zealand.
The Westport News is an independently-owned evening newspaper published in Westport, New Zealand. It is published on weekdays, and is one of New Zealand's smallest independent newspapers. The Westport News is distributed from Karamea in the north to Punakaiki in the south and as far inland as Reefton.
Alison Pilkington is an Irish artist who was born in Sligo, Ireland, in 1967. She graduated with a Diploma in Fine Art Painting and Printmaking from Sligo RTC in 1989 and with a BA Hons in Fine Art Painting from The National College of Art and Design, Dublin in 1990. She is a lecturer in Painting at IADT Dun Laoghaire, a Board Member of The Model Arts and Niland Gallery, Sligo and Co – Editor of ‘The Fold’ publication with Cora Cummins, a publishing platform for invited artists to consider various themes. In 2012 she won a British Institution award for painting at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London. In the same year she was shortlisted for the Marmite Painting Prize, which toured the UK from December 2012 to June 2013. In 2013 Pilkington was a Prizewinner in the 5th International ArtSlant Prize.
The Left Bank Art Gallery is a public art gallery in Greymouth, New Zealand. Operated by the West Coast Society of Arts Inc, it opened in 1992 in a 1927 Bank of New Zealand building on the left bank of the Grey River. The only staffed public gallery on the West Coast, it exhibits artists from Karamea to Haast, and holds the National Pounamu Collection which was assembled from a biennial carving competition.
Coast FM is a local radio station in Westport, New Zealand, to most of the West Coast Region. The station began in 1995 as Radio Fifeshire Westport in partnership with Fifeshire FM in Nelson, and started broadcasting in Hokitika and Greymouth in 1996. The station was rebranded as Coast FM in 1999, but is not related to Coast network that broadcasts in other parts of the country. It used to broadcast from the Westport News offices in the former BNZ building on Palmerston Street.
The Reefton Distilling Co. is a distillery founded in 2017 in Reefton, in the West Coast region of New Zealand. It specialises in gin, including one named "Little Biddy" after famed West Coast gold miner Bridget Goodwin.
Marilyn Rea-Menzies is a New Zealand artist, principally known for her tapestry work, but who also exhibits drawing, painting, and digital print. She is considered one of New Zealand's leading textile artists.
Brent Trolle, also styled as Brent Trollé, is a New Zealand artist based in Hokitika on the West Coast. He is known for his oil and acrylic landscapes, mostly of Westland, Nelson, Canterbury, and Otago.
Sue Syme is a New Zealand artist. Her work is held in the permanent collection of Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
Alan Pearson (1929–2019) was a neo-expressionist painter who lived in New Zealand and, in his later life, Australia.
