Marilynn
Webb
Prints and Pastels
 Bridie Lonie &
Marilynn Webb
'
Tastes in art are as varied as they are in food, but the words and images
we are offered by Lonie and Webb can't help but interest and educate
anyone with a lively mind' Wairarapa Times Age
An outstanding artist and art educator, Marilynn Webb gained international
stature as a print-maker early in her career. Working as an art adviser
in Northland and Auckland she created memorable images that were instantly
recognisable as coming from her hand.
Less well-known are her pastel drawings, a development in her work
after she moved to Dunedin in 1974 to take up a Frances Hodgkin Fellowship.
She has created several brilliant series based on New Zealand's
southern wilderness areas: Lake Mahinerangi, the Ida Valley, Fiordland
and Stewart Island in particular. Her work makes us aware that we are
always in the landscape, and draws us into the environmental and social
issues surrounding it.
Marilynn Webb: Prints and Pastels explores Webb's career and surveys
her work. It contains an essay by Bridie Lonie and full chronology, and
is illustrated with over 60 reproductions of works from the 1960s through
to the present. These give wonderful overview of her development and
concerns as an artist.
Of part Nga Puhi descent, Webb trained under the Arts Advisory Scheme
and worked as an arts adviser for the Department of Education in Auckland
and Northland, and the Northern Maori Project. The framework from this
experience, particularly its community-base, has sustained her throughout
her career.
While in Auckland she began a series on nuclear testing. Other areas
of concern have been the flooding of the Clutha valley with the Clyde
dam and the destruction of the tussock habitat on high country farms.
Gallery commissions often herald major developments in her art and subjects. 'Taste
before Eating' was commissioned by the Dowse Art Museum as an alternative
recipe book for the government when it was 'thinking big'.
Eastern Southland Art Gallery, a cultural centre that considers it
vital to respond to its community's needs, in 1994 brought together a
number of southern artists, including Webb - her resulting pastels
on the Mataura River are major works. New relationships were also forged
in the late 1990s between artists and the Southland Conservancy of the
Department of Conservation. This provided Webb with access to remote
and beautiful landscapes whose natural history she would inscribe in
a new synthesis of print technique. Several major projects, including 'From
Hodge to Hodgkins to here', resulted.
Webb's work has been exhibited extensively throughout New Zealand
and internationally in Australia, United States, India, Japan, Yugoslavia,
Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom. She has lectured
in printmaking at the Otago Polytechnic School of Art since 1988 and
her students include many of New Zealand's interesting new artists.
In 2000 she became an Officer of the NZ Order of Merit for her contribution
to printmaking in New Zealand.
About the Authors
Bridie Lonie is course coordinator, Art History and Theory, at the
Otago Polytechnic School of Art.
Marilynn Webb was a senior lecturer in printmaking, Otago Polytechnic
School of Art. She was made Emeritus Principal Lecturer in 2004.
Publication details
210 x 235 mm, paperback, ISBN 1 877276 36 7, paperback,
210 x 235mm, 128 pp, illustrated, $59.95
60 colour reproductions, 60 b/w photographs, prints and drawings
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