PEAKS plays homage to the many artists throughout history who have sought to capture nature’s behemoths.

Presenting the Welcome Swallow Gallery’s 40th exhibition does feel like reaching a summit of sorts. PEAKS plays homage to the many artists throughout history who have sought to capture nature’s behemoths.*

  Vincent Van Gogh was obsessed with painting the mountains at Saint-Remy. Likewise, Paul Cezanne portrayed Mount Saine-Victoire over 80 times, using planes of colour to create dramatic post-impressionist compositions. In the latter half of the 19th century Thomas Moran famously captured iconic images of Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. In New Zealand, artists such as Peter McIntyre and Rita Angus typically used moderne, stylized methods to capture the mountains of Central Otago.

  An artist’s desire to paint nature’s peaks rests on several well-established criteria. Turner saw such structures as ‘sublime,’ encompassing  beauty with overwhelming awe and indeed terror. For Chinese artists, landscapes stand as the pinnacle of artistic representation, where mountains explore philosophical and spiritual aspects of nature, embracing a sense of harmony and tranquility.

 Strength, with stability and introspection can often be found in mountain compositions, while The Hudson River School painters such as Thomas Cole portrayed mountains as resplendent of a pristine divine American wilderness reflected in national identity.

  And this should be said. In the land of Sir Edmund Hillary a colossus who strode across his mountainous world, one cannot imagine viewing the compositions presented in this exhibition without considering the possibility of actually climbing them!

  Paced by award winning and new gallery artist Michael Barker, the PEAKS exhibition captures the full range of New Zealand mountain scenery.  The insights and interpretations of each artist are as majestic as the vistas themselves. Rope up and reach for the summit. All of them.