ARTIS Gallery artist Don Peebles has been added to the 'living circle' of Icons by the Arts Foundation in their most recent round of awards. The Icon Awards were launched in 2003 and are limited to a group of 20 living artists. Don Peebles has been recognised by the Arts Foundation for his contributions to the Arts in particular as a maverick abstract artist in the conservative New Zealand of 50 years ago.
This award sits alongside Peebles New Zealand Order of Merit awarded in 1999 for services to New Zealand art and an honorary Doctorate in Literature from the University of Canterbury in 2003.
"What makes Don's
paintings such a pleasure to look at? There's the constant feeling of
geometry and the hundred ways it can be pleasurably corrupted. There's
the faith in painting's possibilities, alongside a necessary humility
about its worldly powers. And above all, there's the sense you are
watching a seriously, playful visual intelligence thinking through his
materials. Artists don't just give us things to look at but also ways
to look at things, and my favourite works of Don's are models of how we
might, in our own ideal moments, respond to the world around us - with
curiosity and alertness and openness to what is given."
Justin Paton, art critic and Dunedin Public Art Gallery Curator of Contemporary Art, http://www.artsfoundation.org.nz/peebles.html
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