Penny Otto

Above picture 1: “Messaging Denis Glover” – pastel on Caxton paper
Picture 2: Detail (Rangitoto Island) Picture 3: Detail (Browns Island)

Sketching from the cliff top at Glover Park and looking out towards Rangitoto, with the water glittering below, I had a familiar tonal challenge, how to hold the brilliance of that light without losing the quiet structure beneath it.

Studying the vast heaving sea, I was reminded of a remark made long ago by a tutor during my art school life classes: it doesn’t matter what the colour is, as long as the tone is right. That advice about tone/shades has stayed with me, and it feels especially relevant here, given the vastness of the space and the evocative nature of the vantage point.

Glover Park, at my back while I sketch, itself adds another layer of resonance. Denis Glover—one of New Zealand’s finest poets and the co-founder of the Caxton Press of Christchurch in1936 — comes to mind immediately, even though the park is not named after him, but after a family who once lived in the area. No matter. Standing here, sketchbook in hand, it’s hard not to reflect on the legacy of a man who contributed so richly to our cultural landscape.

Glover Park itself sits within an ancient volcanic crater Whakamuhu formed by a powerful explosion 161,000 years ago which is worth considering when one gazes at Rangitoto, a much younger volcano, said to have erupted 700 years ago. Then there is Browns Island once known as Motukorea (0yster Catcher Island.) One of the best preserved volcanoes in Auckland it is now strategically placed in the mouth of the Tamaki Estuary. When it was first formed 25,000 years ago it was on dry land and three pa sites have been found on it.

These final lines taken from Denis Glover’s poem seem appropriate.

Mountain and the Sea

‘Till the mountains turn into plains

And the plains into sea,

And the mountains thrust up again

From the timeless loins of the sea…

“Rangitoto from Glover Park” – pastel on Caxton paper