Artist:	April Shin
Title:	Houses in the Valley in Browns Bay
Medium:	Mixed Media on canvas
Size:	900 x 1200cm
Date:	2008
Price:	$5,500
Sold:	No

April Shin presents her first New Zealand landscapes, depicting the area where she now lives in Browns Bay, Auckland. These landscapes are based on an area of recent development at the back of Browns Bay, the hinterland of the North Shore which faces to the west rather than the sea. They are an extension of Shin’s previous works which were concerned with flora and fauna where the surfaces are built up to accentuate leaves and flowers. In this new series of paintings the texture has been manipulated to accentuate spacial elements and objects such as the hills, trees and the development of houses into the landscape. Shin states, “The experience of motherhood has changed the significance of a house and home for me. It is more important to me now – a place of security, pleasure and nesting”.(1) Shin has not studied individual New Zealand artists per se but there appears to be interesting analogies here with Sir Toss Woollaston’s landscapes from his “Sunset Grey River” series. Woollaston stated “I wished to paint the sunlight – but after it had been absorbed in the earth… a country of low yellowish hills descending unemphatically to form flats or inland tidal reaches”.(2)[read more] Gil Docking stated in his book, ‘Two Hundred Years of NZ Painting’, “Woollaston’s paintings may be regarded as being landscapes of feelings, mood and emotions”.(3) Shin and Woollaston are obviously of the same heart and mind here as April states, “I tried to depict the atmosphere, imagery and feeling when the sun goes down at Dusk, and the light has been absorbed into the whole atmosphere, the trees, leaves, the windows of houses, the dreamy haze that filters into my studio. When the sun goes down, the greens, oranges and yellowish tints create a surreal effect, almost a fantasy".(4) The houses paradoxically become two dimentional shapes which float across the sunlit landscape. The analogy to Woollaston’s earlier work continues where Shin has emphasized the tone and atmosphere by employing a stark reduction in colour – primary colours are substituted for the pastel greens and yellows. The significance of a new environment has provided inspiration for this new direction in Shin’s painting. The warm glow of new life and motherhood has materialized together with this captivating new series of paintings. (1) April Shin – Letter to Warwick Henderson Gallery September 2008 (2) Two Hundred Years of NZ Painting – G Docking (p158) Reed 1971 (3) Ibid (4) April Shin – Letter to Warwick Henderson Gallery September 2008. Text copyright Warwick Henderson Gallery 2008