Probably more than anything else Pat Hanly was the consummate showman and magician. These two qualities made him supreme artists who couldn't help but turn his life and the events of his life into colourful displays and quick-witted observations.
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“Hanly”, edited by Gregory O'Brien
Ron Sang Publications
Standard Edition $135.00 + p&p
Collector's Limited Edition $295.00 + p&p
Probably more than anything else Pat Hanly was the consummate showman and magician. These two qualities made him supreme artists who couldn’t help but turn his life and the events of his life into colourful displays and quick-witted observations.
I first encountered Pat where he was a drawing tutor at the Auckland University School of Architecture. He probably did teach some drawing skills but it was when he demonstrated on ones poorly executed rendering of a wall or a door or a building that he seemed to exude imagination and vision. He didn’t just correct an observation; he embellished with a flourish and in so doing showed me not how to draw but how to look.
If it were anyone else’s hand which had scribbled over ones drawing there would have been a sense of outrage but with Pat it was more of a sharing of the joy of seeing things with a fresh eye and from a new perspective.
This is something which is apparent in all his art. Each of his series, from the New Order works through the Figure in Light to the late Pure Paintings and Pacific Condition works shows an artist searching for new ways of seeing and showing.
A combination of latter day Impressionism combined a Matisse feeling for colour and a painterly flourish worthy of Jackson Pollock, tinged with a Picasso-like bravura made his work colourful, accessible and engaging.
These qualities can be seen in the magnificent new book “Hanly”, a major 300 page monograph on the career of the artist as a painter, print-maker and muralist. It features over 300 of his works including two superb gatefolds of Hanly's Auckland Medical School and Auckland International Airport murals.
The idea of Pat Hanly as a showman is alluded to in Greg O’Brien’s perceptive introdctuon to the book where he notes that the artist “might be thought of as a jazz drummer at one end of the concert hall while, at the other end Colin McCahon played the church organ”.
He also notes that, “Hanly was that rare thing in mid-20th-century New Zealand art, a painter of spring / summer rather than that of autumn / winter. His work came as a surprise to the light-sensitive retinas of the gallery-going public. Here was a painter of dazzling sunshine rather than the dusk or night-time”.
Over a career spanning four decades, Pat Hanly sought a new way of looking at New Zealand - the land and its people. His art heralded new ways of thinking about this country - as a nation that belonged to the young and the adventurous, to the dreamers and those who could see the vital place the island national could have within Polynesia and the broader Pacific.
As Pat said of his early work “One was trying to make images that were totally original responses to the environment. It wasn’t anything intellectual, it was a physical reaction. The big spaces, the rawness of the land the lack of people and the freshness, the openness, the lushness and the contrasting light and dark.”
Hanly, like many great artists created a set of symbols, and themes which he used and developed. There was the Vessel of Hope, the Woman / Muse and the child. There was also Mt Eden where he lived, his garden and himself.
He used these to explore issues which were important to him; the fate of the world, the environment and his relationships with people.
In all of these works though there was drama, reflected in the use of vibrant colour, the gestural flourish and a continual attempts to find the essential core of the subject - its energy and life.
This timely monograph celebrates a remarkable life's work and acknowledges Hanly's singular role within the history of New Zealand art and offers an unprecedented record of Hanly’s effervescent, brilliant paintings, many of which have achieved iconic status. It also takes us into the endlessly inventive world of his water colours, prints and drawings.
It is also a timely book in that Hanly’s work is also becoming much sought after at fine art auctions with recent sales such as $73,000 for “Cottage Mix” and $180,000 for “Yellow Jogger”.
The book includes revealing accounts by four of Pat Hanly's closest friends from his Ilam Art School days: John Coley, Barry Lett, Quentin MacFarlane and Dick Ross. It also presents a rich and lively visual account of Hanly's life through the photographs of Gil Hanly, Marti Friedlander and others.
An annotated chronology tracks the artist's career-path and samples, along the way, the critical response to his work. The large-scale plates - which represent works that have never been reproduced before, as well as Hanly's best-known and loved images - offer an emphatic account of what must stand as the most vivid, animated body of paintings by a single artist to have yet hailed from these shores.
This book like Ron Sang’s previous publications is a work of art in itself with great attention to colour accuracy and design. It is the fist major design by the young graphic designer Meiling Lee who is an Auckland-based artist and designer.
Ron Sang Publications major monographs include monographs on potter Len Castle (2002), painters Michael Smither (2004), John Drawbridge (2008), Ralph Hotere (2008), Guy Ngan (2010) and film-maker/artist Vincent Ward (2012).
Comments on Pat Hanly's art from Pat Hanly (Ron Sang Publications, 2012)
'The extraordinary body of works Pat Hanly left behind attests to a complex and various character - at once holy fool, navigator, star sailor, teacher, guru (by some accounts), savant, environmentalist, party-goer, family man, a ‘painter for peace’, a Puck who was also a Pied Piper, a dreamer, a schemer, an inventor, a lightning bolt. Beyond the busy society of these paintings, and the full and generous life which underscored their making, Pat Hanly’s art offered a heavenly vision of life on earth, while also offering an earthly account of heaven.'
—Gregory O'Brien
'The work of Pat Hanly, though it has been described as eclectic, has a consistent neo-expressionist quality… From his early series like the Showgirl and Fire series of 1960 and 1961, painted in Europe, Hanly gives a subjective and heightened rendering of subjects, which he freely distorts in scale, colour and shape… Although it is possible to link Hanly to the neo-expressionistic direction in recent New Zealand art, his painting stands as an individual development somewhat at odds with the angst-ridden darkness and pessimism of some of his contemporaries…'
—Michael Dunn, quoted from Concise History of New Zealand Painting (AUP 2003)
'By the end of the ‘New Order’ in 1963 Pat’s paintings had an assurance and light to them quite unlike anything else being made here at the time. Then, in their own way, the ‘Figures in Light’ series made a breakthrough for New Zealand painting almost as critical as had Colin McCahon’s ‘Northland Panels’ six years earlier... As the ‘Northland Panels’ fractured the obstacles of scale, ‘Figures in Light’ segued around landscape and began to move painting on to a more freely rendered urban focus. (The series also struck a substantial blow to our artistic obsessions with angst.) ...'
—Hamish Keith, quoted from Pat Hanly; a celebration of his life & work, 2006
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