Ocean Beach by Dick Frizzell

This print was published by the artist in conjunction with the Gow Langsford Gallery in Auckland. It is an open edition unsigned reproduction print of an original painting by Dick Frizzell.

This is one of only two prints currently available of a Dick Frizzell landscape painting. This painting depicts the view along Ocean Beach that is overlooked by Dick's home and studio. When Frizzell described what the ocean means to him in piece for the Worldwide Fund for Nature he wrote "The Ocean... It's my front door. Literally! Sometimes it comes rumbling up the stoney beach and knocks on that door! A previous inhabitant of the site told me that living there was 99% paradise and 1% sheer terror and I think he got that pretty much right! And while those extremes can be a bit unsettling it's the constant changes of landscape and mood that I love so much...that and the sense of space and unlimited freedom that the sea and the sky present. It's a powerful metaphor and I can see how sailors and fishermen get so romantic about it, and while I have no ambition to actually get out there amongst it I can stand there and dream. In summer we have these magic evenings where the low rays of the setting sun behind us in the West catch the seagulls flashing white wings from below as they wheel and soar against the darkening Eastern sky and in Winter we watch the moon come trembling up from the sea like a poached egg coming out of the pan... it's a special place."

Turning to look at the actual artwork when "Ocean Beach" came up for auction in March 2010 Webbs wrote a superb description of this painting. Webb's cataloguer wrote that after "living and working in Auckland for 40 years, Dick Frizzell relocated to Haumoana, Hawke's Bay in 2003. His immersion in a landscape at once familiar from his youth and so patently different from the hubbub of the inner city, rekindled a desire to paint himself back into the landscape." We learn that Ocean Beach "belongs to a series of paintings celebrating the unique features of the area. Traditional landscape paintings of Te Mata Peak and Cape Kidnappers are joined by more quirky representations of roadside fruit stall signs. They consist of little more than a rough shelter and an honesty box and their positions are noted well in advance by the basic hand-painted signs offering plums, pumpkins and caulis! The work is diffused with a pink glow, a hazy aura of warmth, and the salt-saturated air blurs our long-distance view of the peaks beyond. The extreme foreground with its weather-beaten macrocarpas and solitary farm dwelling is crisp in comparison: the yellowing pasture testament to the long hot summers."

Like this Dick Frizzell print? Buy more prints like Ocean Beach from the following collections at New Zealand's art print specialists since 1966:

Dick Frizzell Prints
Latest NZ Prints
Contemporary NZ Landscape Painting