New Zealand has appointed official war artists to visually record armed conflict and other aspects of military life since 1918. Three of our recent artists are profiled below.
Colin Wynn
Born in Wellington in 1950, artist Colin Wynn is one of New Zealand’s leading sea and landscape artists. He began painting professionally in the early 1970s when he moved to the West Coast town of Reefton to be near the coast. In 1983 he was invited by the Royal New Zealand Navy to be their artist, a part-time position which involves several weeks’ work every year. “It’s been really interesting. It’s taken me to many places in New Zealand and around the world that I normally wouldn’t get to,” he said.
Matt Gauldie
Captain Matt Gauldie, 32, was appointed the New Zealand Army’s official artist in April 2005. Later that year he completed basic training at Waiouru to gain a better understanding of life in the Army. Captain Gauldie trains, lives, patrols and works with soldiers, often in the harsh environments in which they work, to best capture the experiences of his subjects. He says his five weeks in Afghanistan gave him an insight into all areas of the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team’s work, on patrol and in its Bamyan compound. His popular exhibition, Faces of Courage: Through the eyes of an artist, opened in Auckland in April.
Maurice Conly
The RNZAF’s last official artist was the late Maurice Conly. He travelled extensively to RNZAF areas in the Pacific and also took two tours to the Antarctic. Squadron Leader Conly was born in Dunedin and received his art training there. His acrylic work “Sunderland in Hangar” shows a Sunderland NZ4116 ‘S’ being worked on by maintenance personnel at Lauthala Bay, Fiji, while ‘Ventura attack on Rabaul’, shows RNZAF Venturas over Rabaul township, Papua New Guinea.