1
MICHAEL SMITHER - Okahu Bay Boats
Estimate:
$8,000 - $12,000
Sold
$12,000
Live Auction
The Silich Collection Part 1
ARTIST
MICHAEL SMITHER (b. 1939)
Size
62 x 30
Description
Oil & alkyd on board
Signature
Signed & dated 2002
Provenance
Collection of the Artist Important Works of Art, Webb’s 30/03/2010
Literature
Hugely popular with critics and the public alike, and in
prestigious public and private collections both in New
Zealand and overseas, Michael Smither was appointed a
Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services
to the art in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2004.
Living near the idyllic Coromandel beach of Opoutere he
continues to paint in his 82nd year. His 1967 painting Sea
Wall and Kingfisher set the record for the sale of a work by a
living artist in New Zealand when it sold at the International
Art Centre for $342,000 in October 2019.
Since the 1990s, painter Michael Smither has repeatedly
created images based on the patterns made by boats
bobbing about in bright sunshine on the glittering waters
of Auckland’s Okahu Bay. These works have become
increasingly abstract so that just the silhouettes of the bows
and the cabins are evident in this painting, stacked vertically
to form a column of bright syncopation. Highly coloured
works such as this give free rein to Smither’s interest in the
connections between colour harmonies and contrasts and
those found in music. A talented composer himself, he is
interested in evoking the sensation of synaesthesia, where
as a note is heard, a colour is seen, connecting the spectrum
with the musical scale.
LINDA TYLER