Douglas MacDiarmid – as seen by a kindred spirit
A visual treat from acclaimed New Zealand painter Piera McArthur’s distinctive brush, showing her friend Douglas MacDiarmid in a completely new light. MacDiarmid largely avoided the company of other artists, but he and Piera are creative soulmates.
MacDiarmid and McArthur have enjoyed a deep painterly bond for decades. They met in Paris during the McArthur’s early New Zealand diplomatic service in Europe, when Piera sought him out for advice. Beyond her busy foreign affairs role supporting her husband John as Ambassador, and nurturing their growing family, she had decided her vocation was to be a painter. Would he give her some lessons?
Douglas immediately saw her talent and boundless imagination. He doesn’t believe you should teach painting, merely liberate the creativity that is already there. “Good Heavens no,” he told her, “but I’d be happy to paint with you.”
Theirs is a cherished friendship like no other, completely in tune. Apart from the McArthurs’ three postings in France, when the pair worked together in the Embassy’s vast attic with light streaming in from skylights, there was a continual exchange of letters bursting with ideas and encouragement, and Douglas visited the family in capital cities from Brussels to Moscow.
Piera has painted four portraits of her close friend over the years, capturing his tall angular form, that direct gaze and equal mix of curiosity and high intelligence…including one he thought made him look like “a wet curate.”
In 1990 he told her: “As a species, painters must rank among the most vain, incoherent, ego-centric, treacherous, envious, pretentious individuals that our faltering civilisation can produce – which doesn’t prevent a few from doing dazzling good work. But everything else is against liking them, or even tolerating most of them. More’s the pity.”
Then in 1996, confiding that edge of doubt: “Every so often I do have a glimmering of what I’m aiming at which gets into the work, after which the gods taunt me, since I can’t quite see how to bring it off.”
And: “Every line about painting I read these days is unanimous in declaring that if it’s not provocative, it isn’t even a painting. What is provocative supposed to do?”
When Piera opened MacDiarmid’s 1999 Retrospective exhibition in Wellington, she painted a vivid picture of her friend, his philosophy of paint, and their wonderful communication.
“He talks endlessly about the need to digest one’s vision and to escape the tyranny of pure description, looking for the mysterious rhythm of painterly interpretation. He often said to me: ‘You must dig deep into yourself, questioning’. Once he sent me an urgent note…“I beg you to consider – if a pastel succeeds at once it can be marvellous, but of a painting is finished straight away, there must be something wrong with it…love D’
“I can hear him saying…‘The very fact of painting cuts us down to size every day of our lives. It all boils down to the impossible struggle to surpass ourselves, which grows more imperative and difficult year after year. But don’t have the impression that it is all anguish.’
For Piera, MacDiarmid is “an enormous part of life, now and always will be. I personally owe so much to Douglas – the double headed axe out of Minoan mythology. He is one of the three most important men in my life. The deep love we have for one another is based on mutual respect and what we want from life.
“I paint nothing like him, we are very different but he was the one who made me believe in myself and helped me to get it out…A wonderful man, full of fun, full of laughter, but very serious about painting, which is his total life, as it is now mine.”
