Billy McQueen - Back and Forth

Back and Forth

Forestry state houses. Pastel pinks, yellows, turquoise.
Brown doorsteps.
The smell of pine. The sound of the trees.
They swing back and forth.
No ocean, just ponds, streams and dams.
Iwitahi is gone. Doorsteps remain.
Memories go back and forth.
Our new home is further north.
Near the estuary, by the lake.
We go back and forth.
Kui is with us. So are the children, kune kunes, chickens and dogs.
The smell of the ocean.
The sound of the trees.
They swing back and forth.

Billy McQueen
Tāmaki Makaurau/Mangawhai
April 2025



Billy McQueen is process led painter who retains something of a strong sense of narrative. While his work is pictorial in appearance, it’s concerned with the evocative potential of paint, embracing both the recent history of abstraction alongside broader traditions of narrative painting. His process led approaches to the language and medium of painting, allows each to create resonant and ambiguous images which shift between the real and imaginary - pushing at the medium’s potential for depth and meaning.

McQueen's paintings are largely draw inspiration from domestic scenes of family life and imagery associated with ancestral land in the Kaingaroa Plains. His subject matter carries a subdued autobiographical tone and takes a backseat to his main focus: exploring the richness of painterly substance, surface textures, and the illusionary spaces they can create