A Smaller Splash

Gather Round (Harakeke)

Alternative Routes (Tōtara Tree)

Northern Shadows

Laying Down Routes

Crossing Paths

Holding Light- detail

Mid Summer

Pink Frosting  

Caravaggio would have loved Magnolias

Though coming a long way

Through the Years (Nikau Trunk)

Arc in the Cycle

Flower Within (Hydrangea)

Under the Skin ( Totara)

Otago Gold

Getting to the Point (Prickly Pear)

Cross Reference (Harakeke)

Black Light (Harakeke)

Fractal Foliage (Ponga Branch)

Te Āhua

Scattered Light (Magnolia)

Past Generations (Ponga)

Pōhutakawa Glade

In Transition (Horoeka)

Holding Light

Tane Moana

Worlds within Worlds

Dead Red 

Thorny Prince

Sleeping Beauty

Complex Rhythms

Under the Surface I & III

Dave's Rose

One Tree Hill

Break on Through

Hot Lips

Worlds Within Worlds

Under The Surface- installation

Crossing Paths- installation

Spot the Difference III

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants 

Growing Connections ii 

 Pink Frosting II 

Lightform

Crossing Over 

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants (Tane Mahua

Growing Connections ii

Growing Connections i

Leading the Way

Crossing Over

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Pillars of the Community 

Shaddow Form

London born Neal Palmer has a BA Hons in Fine Art from Trent University and was encouraged to experiment; his practice evolving from painting to printmaking, then installation. Working as a prop maker and scenic artist in film and television after graduating, Palmer lived and worked in the United Kingdom, Australia and in 1998 settled in New Zealand. Coming to terms with the natural environment of his new home, the artist engaged in painting again, to great success, finding a strong affinity and emotional nostalgic response from the native flax.

With a consistent interest in blending colour, pattern, texture and abstract forms, Palmer has consistently developed and perfected the illusion of a photographic depth of field. Allowing his work to slip in and out of pictorialism and abstract flatness; creating a tension between the paintings surface and the illusion of space. Aspiring for his work to be relational 

“mark-making that lifts the painting beyond the material world”

Neal Palmer

Föenander Galleries is proud to present Neal Palmer’s new body of work ‘Reaction & Reflection’ which responds to his recent artist residency at Auckland Botanic Gardens:

I started the groundwork for this exhibition at the beginning of 2023 while I was Artist in Residence at the Auckland Botanic Gardens in Manurewa.

During my residency, I created a large wall of A2 works on paper – a direct visual reaction to the gardens, a kind of portrait made up of carefully selected details. My studio was set up in the Huakaiwaka Visitor Centre, in public view.

The idea was to create as many works as possible, displaying them in a sequence that corresponded to the route I enjoyed taking through the gardens. My path curved from the Endangered Natives and Pā Harakeke areas through Native Trees, Edibles, past the Visitor Centre, through the Pines, into the Cactus area, the Children’s Garden, Roses and finally the Palms. My intention was to explore the character and variety of the Gardens as opposed to focusing on one area.

I approached the project in my usual way, walking and spending time in the environment, looking for shapes, patterns and colours that drew my attention before working on ideas through the lens of a camera. From there, I started to figure out how those images could be reinterpreted in drawings and paintings. I used a variety of materials, aiming for a balance between the character of the place and the photographic and experimental painted and drawn mark-making I’m known for. It was a specific reaction to visual languages, materials, time and place.

I’m attracted to details, the twist of a branch, the triangles between Harakeke leaves, the bands on a Nikau trunk, finding formal compositions in organic subjects and using those details to build a larger story. I wanted to represent the Gardens while experimenting with the materials. My intention was to create a spontaneous reaction and not worry about making polished pieces. I wanted to show the workings of my time there.

The A2 paper works did just that, encompassing a warts-and-all approach, with frottage pieces, sketches and more considered pieces that took time to explore the ideas in detail.

I ended up producing 60 individual works. I particularly like the way they relate and react visually with each other and tell the story of my time and movement through the gardens. A time I enjoyed immensely, not just because of the place but also the people I interacted with, both visitors and staff. Because my studio set up was in the public space, my interactions were constant – a rare experience for me, and a novelty for most of the people I spoke with. The idea was to have my process on display, showing how I form ideas and make my work. I really enjoyed the many interactions and conversations I had about art, nature, and botanical politics.

After reflecting on my time at the Gardens, I decided to create a series of paintings in considered response to those paper works, using the portrait of the garden in details and the grid format of interacting organic forms, but giving them more space to breathe as individual images.

These paintings are less about time and place, they’re more closely related to my usual body of work.

As with my time at the gardens, the point of this exhibition is partly to show a process, how an idea evolves and develops through progressive stages, and how I end up creating the work I do

Reaction and Reflection

Neal Palmer is one of New Zealand’s leading botanical painters, known for his large scale paintings of native fauna. His new exhibition: Connections explores our relationship with the montane forests of Aotearoa:

There is an inner sense of wellbeing that comes from spending time among trees and plants - a measurable physical reaction to these environments. Maybe it’s the cool oxygenated air, light filtering in through the forest canopy, or perhaps the simplicity of walking that quiets the mind. Whatever it is, I feel a connection to the forests of Aotearoa and I enjoy sharing this connection with viewers of my work.

This exhibition is a continuation of work exploring my relationship with the montane forests of Aotearoa, in particular Auckland’s west coast. It’s a place I have felt drawn to since first moving here in my 20s, spending time at Piha and more recently reconnecting through an artist residency in Karekare. It's about the experience of being in those places, spending time thinking about my relationship with them.

Early in my artistic process, I gather reference to work from. I often start with photography and sketching plein air. I love the language of photography - depth of field, light flares, motion blurring, colour saturation and contrast are all aspects of photography I bring to my painting. Sketching feeds into the work through the looseness of quick expressive mark-making. My paintings are about a push and pull relationship between these approaches, building bridges between visual languages.

In the studio the work becomes more focused on the painting process, considering painterly aspects, like the relationships of objective surface and illusionary space, flat areas of colour and textural brush marks, compositional structure and smaller individual forms. I like to emphasise contrasting elements, I think they enhance each other. Much like putting colours together from opposite sides of the colour wheel, they become more striking together than they would be individually. These stages are a kind of editing process, where the works are shaped and refined, building from the experience of walking in the forest to a finished painting.

I have been moving towards creating work that reflects the complexity of those forest environments. In the past, I’ve been inclined toward simplification, often picking out details that interest me formally and working through an almost abstract interpretation.

I’ve explored botanical forms in many ways over the years - more recently I’ve started to look at just how complicated, interwoven and dense these bush-scapes really are.

Taking a step backwards to see a wider frame has changed the aesthetics. Dealing with multiple smaller forms is an interesting visual challenge. Composing images with different visual scales, I’m using the same compositional backbones to connect these paintings with each other, and also with earlier works.

This show is about connecting past and present ideas in order to keep moving forward, and connecting us all to a positive and protective relationship with the green spaces of Aotearoa.

Connections

When our borders re-opened in 2022, I took the opportunity to travel to Europe and the UK to reconnect with family and friends and to visit as many galleries and exhibitions as I could get to. Big shows in big galleries. Scale was the thing that really jumped out. It changes the way one views work, evoking a visceral, emotional response.

I came home to NZ, inspired to go big. I’ve worked at scale before and had been planning a large works exhibition for some time. The time had come.

‘Under the Surface’ brings together themes and processes I’ve been developing and playing with for 20+ years. I started this body of work as a way of visually acclimatising to a new country.

Having moved from London to Aotearoa and being naturally inclined to the great outdoors I started drawing and taking photographs of the fascinating forms of native plants like Nikau and Harakeke. The resultant paintings were very much about the underlying form of those plants, the way the shapes repeat through scale and relate to each other and how I can represent the essence of those subjects in a way that also relates to painting more widely.

Over the years I’ve developed personal stories around the subjects I’ve studied. The titles reflect the stories I tell myself. ‘Crossing Paths’ references the many possibilities we are faced with, different directions taken, the leaves on their trajectories representing interactions, connections, the intertwining of people’s lives.

I have been taking pictures of magnolias for many years and one of my favourites is in London at Saint Patrick’s church near the Royal Academy of Art. They’ve followed me here on an emotional level, representing the idea of successful migration, my own and more generally a symbol of diverse communities putting down roots. It’s a positive spin on relocation in a modern context, not to be confused with the injustices of the colonial era and the complications involved with that.

I aim to produce work that relates to nature in a positive and enlightening manner, to generate protective feelings towards increasingly stressed ecological environs.

Which brings me to my Kauri work, mega scale personified. A giant born of the gods and a precious piece of the puzzle that is Aotearoa’s complex ecology under stress. With very few of these giant trees left after most of the forests were felled, the remaining Kauri are now threatened by Kauri Dieback Disease which has spread widely and kills quickly.

Dieback spreads through the soil infecting trees via their roots. There’s a lot going on under the surface that we need to understand before it’s too late.

Under the Surface

 is at the same time a statement, a description and a question.

As a description, the paintings in ‘On Track’ are a development from work I started during an art residency at Karekare House in 2018, for which my proposal was to explore and visually respond to walking and running the Hilary trail.

As a question ‘On Track?’ (for my purposes here) refers to environmental issues; are we 

 to mitigate the harshest consequences of climate change?

Can we arrest the loss of bio-diversity? Stop polluting the world? What track are we on?

Walking and running in the Waitakere Ranges and west coast beaches is one of the great pleasures of living in Auckland, and something I have enjoyed for many years. It was a direct response to this environment while living at Piha (1996-7) that sparked a body of work which has now spanned over 20 years. As I mentioned above, in 2018 I was lucky enough to be the inaugural Karekare House artist in residence, I wanted to develop a project that I had been thinking about for a few years after walking the Hilary Trail with my 15yo son. A kind of portrait in pattern and form, to walk/run the trail picking out details to build an aesthetic impression of the journey. But this was March 2018 and we were all becoming aware of Kauri dieback disease, and the majority of the Hilary Trail was closed not long before I started the residency. Thankfully, the section between Piha and Pararaha Valley was open during my time at Karekare, so I was able to do some work on my project.

As with most residencies (it seems to me anyway) the realities of being there changed the direction of the work somewhat. For a start I couldn’t ignore the effect Kauri dieback was having on the Waitakere Ranges and other regions. Kauri dieback is a microbial spore that travels through soil and eventually kills Kauri trees, there are quite a few affected trees in Karekare. It is a heart-breaking thought that without help to stop its spread, Dieback could well wipe out the magnificent Kauri. Though, as with many issues currently, another microbial problem has taken the spot light for the last couple of years. This of course is no reason to take our eye off the ball, we need to deal with all the problems facing us. You can find out more through groups like The Kauri Project and McCahon House. During my residency, I was super excited to be invited to stay at McCahon House so that I could work on a group of frottage pieces from the Kauri in Colin McCahon’s garden. I started these frottage pieces as a way of collecting reference material but soon realised they had great potential as works in their own right.

Despite the fact you can’t walk the Hilary trail presently, I’m still interested in the idea of painting portraits of journeys. In fact, I’m thinking bigger. The Hilary trail used to be part of the Te Araroa track, the trail that runs from Cape Reinga to Bluff. I’ve walked/run various sections so far, including the section near Tutukaka where Tane Moana stands, the largest Kauri on Northland’s east coast.

Tane Moana brings me back to the works in this exhibition, he is the destination. On Track through northern bush trails, following orange triangles to stay the course. Picking up the patterns and forms as we travel- walking, running, thinking, taking pictures and making impressions. It’s about gathering the interesting stuff (to me) so as to create work that gives the feeling of places I have travelled.

Föenander Galleries | Auckland

Neal Palmer