Untitled (Sitting Room, Seacliff)

Joanna Margaret Paul was a multidisciplinary artist and writer. She was born in Kirikiriroa Hamilton on 14 December 1945, the first child of David Blackwood Paul (1908–65) and Janet Elaine Paul (née Wilkinson; 1919–2004). Blackwood was a bookseller and Janet an artist. Together, they worked as publishers and were strong advocates of the arts. In 1964, Paul spent a year living in London with her parents and three younger sisters. There she developed a keen interest in European modernism. Back in Aotearoa, she studied English and Philosophy at the University of Auckland, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1968. In 1967, she enrolled at the University’s Elam School of Fine Arts, where she was taught by Colin McCahon, Greer Twiss, and others. In 1969, while still a student, she held her first solo show at Hamilton Art Gallery. That same year, she graduated with a Diploma of Fine Arts. She moved to Port Chalmers, near Ōtepoti, and connected with the local art community. She met fellow artist Jeffrey Harris, who had moved to Dunedin in 1969. The two married on 27 September 1971 and moved into a cottage at Seacliff, north of the city, where they lived until 1972.

Harris has identified the setting of this painting—which was previously known as Untitled (Interior)—as the sitting room of the cottage. A second picture appears on the reverse, painted in bright colours. Unfortunately, Paul’s married name, Joanna Harris, was inscribed over this work by a framer in permanent marker. Harris notes, ‘Many of the paintings we did at that time were painted on both sides … Poverty and necessity made us use both sides of our boards in those early days.’ Like a large number of later works by Paul, Untitled (Sitting Room, Seacliff) demonstrates her great interest in representing the play of sunlight through diverse structures and across diverse surfaces. At first blush, the painting seems straightforward, but the longer one looks, the less legible it grows. Forms begin to dissolve or become abstract. The empty room is primed for reflection and meditation—and so is the formal arrangement that is the painting.

The installation view, taken by Cheska Brown, shows Untitled (Sitting Room, Seacliff) at City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi, where it was exhibited from 2022 to 2023 as part of Imagined in the context of a room.