The artist is not having it. “I can’t do those dichotomy things,” says Gretchen Albrecht on the line from her Auckland home. We’ve reached the part of the interview which is meant to be the quick bit – rapidfire either/or questions designed to elicit a snapshot of the interviewee’s preferences.
But one of New Zealand’s most influential painters, whose work is gestural, multilayered and experiential, is too carefully considered to be see the world in absolutes.
Sunrise or sunset? “For a painter that locates a lot of stimulus for their painting, both are essential.”
Creative chaos or everything in its place? “In the making of the painting, the chaos of life is given structure.”
I suggest to Albrecht that she’s always occupied her own space in the contemporary art history of New Zealand. She had her first exhibition in 1964 fresh out of Elam School of Fine Arts and has exhibited ever since, here and internationally. A major survey, Gretchen Albrecht: Between gesture and geometry by Luke Smythe, was published in 2019 and updated in 2023 with a new chapter to include important work she continues to make.
Ceremonial (mantle), 2023 by Gretchen AlbrechtSAM HARTNETT / COURTESY TWO ROOMS GALLERY
The 80-year-old is as busy as she’s ever been, preparing new paintings to show at two booths at the Aotearoa Art Fair this month – her Auckland dealer Two Rooms and Fine Arts, Sydney, where she will have a solo show in September. Meanwhile, Te Uru Gallery in Titirangi is diving into the Albrecht archives for a show in November focused on the 1970s and 1980s.
“I think occupying my own space is a very good phrase to deal with where I’ve stood and am still standing making my art,” says Albrecht.
That Te Uru show will cover a period when Albrecht moved into doing large abstract landscapes awash with colour and the introduction of her arched hemisphere canvases.
“I use colour, that’s my voice,” she says. “I like to see my colours expressing some form of sympathetic emotional connection.”
Albrecht has just returned from the gym. A bad accident in 2016 left her knee and lower leg damaged. Regular physio-supervised sessions are crucial for keeping up with the demands of her job.
“Painting is a very physical activity, and certainly it is for me,” she says. “Of course as you get older and things start to stiffen up, you want to be as supple and physically in control of your body as possible.”
After we speak, Albrecht will head straight into the studio, where she spends most days.
“I draw from my own experience, which is multi-stranded. Which does include being a woman, being a mother, being educated with an art historical background with lecturers in the 60s, travel and a great sense of making art out of all of that in New Zealand. It’s like a big brew that bubbles away and out of it I make my art.”
The ideas behind her works often have their genesis way back, says Albrecht, building on what has come before. Just like life.
“All of us, we don’t move through the world fully formed. We’re a work in progress just like a painting is a work in progress. If we’re open ended, we absorb and adapt and modify and change and add on. We embrace the new, or uncertainty. We are in ourselves, we grow with our experiences. We’re not fossils. Yet,” she laughs.
