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Interview
An edited interview with Philip Trusttum by Wayne Lorimer (1997), Courtesy of CoCA
When did you first realise you wanted to become an artist?
I used to draw when I was about seven. My grandmother and mother picked up on it, and I remember them saying things like "That was a good cat." But they weren't necessarily like kids drawings, they were more like proper drawings.
Then I went to Oxford (in Canterbury) when I was around 12 and had teaching by a Miss Cederman every Friday night. It was good technically because we started off with watercolours and this led to oils. But all copied from other painters and reproductions.
Then we went up to Hawarden (in North Canterbury), but the landscape was too big. I didn't know how to handle it, so I gave it away at 15 and went horse riding. Then I went to high school; and did some good stuff. Bold, romantic landscapes of barns, trees and stuff in the cold easterly wind and things like that. They showed us Monet and it meant nothing to us, but it was in that Impressionist style.
Between 1955 - 60, when I was working at Hays (a Christchurch department store), I would do pastel sketches of Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong and Stirling Moss - car magazine stuff. I was working in the Manchester Department and found out that two guys from the ticket department were going to art school. I thought that if they can go, then I can, so I took my car drawings out and the guy said "Fine. If you sit the prelim then you're in." So I worked at the art school in the morning, and Hays in the afternoons. In the next three years I got the Diploma of Fine Arts (1964), went up to Auckland, married (1965) and came back, and worked as a postman until I was 30 (1970).
I was picked up very soon after for a show in England (Contemporary Painting in New Zealand at the Commonwealth Institute, London, 1965) because I was referred to by Rudi Gopas. There was Rita Angus, Pat Hanly, McCahon, Walters - all the big names and they picked a couple of young guys. Of course, I didn't really realise what was going on. It was like a guy playing high school rugby and then being picked for the All Blacks, but not really knowing the implications. I was a non-entity. No one had ever heard of me.
Then I showed in Auckland, which was my major source up until Mr & Mrs Hoss (New Vision Gallery) died, and I lost my gallery and have never been the same since in Auckland. The galleries there haven't really known ho to market me or handle my type of personality.
So that was the start of it really. I went to Australia and lived there in 1967, quit the post office, and have been painting ever since.
How difficult was it to decide to become a full-time artist?
Well, I was selling work quite well then. The post office was only paying about $80 a fortnight, but this was before the big wage increases. So we were living minimally, but I was getting cheques from Peter McClevey's gallery which was equivalent to two months wages. I was selling for $600 then, so I would get $400, and that was quite a lot of money.
So Peter McClevey was probably the main one to twist my arm. He said if I kept on the way I was going I'd have more money but I wouldn't be a good painter. So I quit the post office not really knowing what was going to happen. And there had been some bad years when I've only earned around $2000. But my wife (Lee) was working, so she was able to pick up the slack. I've never had a boom, and I've never had a bust, except for my early 30's which were a bad time.
Who were some of your inspirations as a young artist?
Rudi Gopas was the main one. Then there was Don Peebles, Pollock, De Kooning. The first nice influence was Dick Lovell-Smith when I did quite a good still-life that we had to paint for the prelim exam (for art school). I put subtle colour into some white plates, and he commented on how good it was. He needn't have said anything as he was an adjudicator. That was when I was 20.
Gopas was the teacher in the next room, for the next year, but you heard him yelling from next door. We thought we were really for it, but it turned out he was the best teacher in the school. Russell Clark and Bill Sutton were there, and they were very good, but Gopas was the one who really wrenched you out of the kiwi 'sleep' and into a universal frame of mind. You belong to the painters who have come before: Ingres, Delacroix, Rembrant, and when you go over and see these works you understand why. And you float past all these other paintings thinking 'I might come back and look at them later' but you don't.
I still have nightmares about once a year. Once was once Picasso saw my work and it didn't go down too well, and the other was Gopas. So it's a father figure image if you like.
If a lot of your inspiration came from New York, was there ever a pull to go over and try to make it there as an artist?
I got married and had kids (Martin and Hanna) so it's an unanswered question really. I've been over four times now, and I'd probably like to live there if I had an income around $US100,000. But I wouldn't like to live in New York as a struggling artist.
I think if I lived there they would be different paintings. Probably not a lot different, but they'd be different. I asked Marshall Siefert why he hadn't bought any of my works years ago, and he said it was because I don't paint like a New Zealander. Well I don't think that's quite true, so it's interesting how the history rubs off on you and how people see you.
Do you try and keep up with the New Zealand art scene?
No - I actually try and keep away from it, because it's like gossiping. I believe that if you say something bad about somebody it's in the air, and permeates the atmosphere somehow. So I try to keep an overview, that's why I've picked Waimate (in rural South Canterbury in the South Island) rather than Auckland.
I believe that an artist doesn't belong anywhere, you should paint what affects you. But having said that, it doesn't really matter what you paint. If you paint if for yourself, you knock the New Zealand art scene for a six.
I didn't know what to paint in my early 30's, so I went to New York, to one of those Volvo Tennis Tournaments. Distance gives you insight, and I though then that when I come back to New Zealand I'll paint what I like. And that's what I've done ever since. So I would say to an artist, pick your parentage, and than ask yourself 'what do I want?' Just that one questions - 'what do I want to paint?'
A lot of the talk e have today is far too negative. When I saw my first Barnett Newman it really annoyed me. It triggered something in me, and I'd have flattened him if he'd seen him. But the funny thing is that I was trying to paint like him ten years later. But when I first saw his work I just wanted to paint. The major artists generate this spirit. So you are talking about a positive force.
There seems to be a sense that painting has run its course, and installation is now where it's at. What are your views on that?
There's a bit of deja vu there. I've seen quite a lot of installations. A lot get done in New York. But I'd have to say that I don't think painting will ever die completely.
In my late 30's I wasn't really painting, and it was all installation. I stopped because painting was too hard. Sometimes the journey is too hard, and it's difficult to resolve. What I was doing up to 1979 was telling the painting what to do. The paintings got to tell you what to do. So what I do to exorcise myself if paint everyday on a stream, and the dialogue builds up from painting to painting. And I try to paint the same painting - like Cezanne was doing. But you find that after a week's painting that one stands out and so you roll the others up - no quarrel. When you have shows like this (MOTIF), that's when you need someone else to come in, and that's when you step back too. But you do know that of 25 works, two are good, everybody likes them, and there's arguments about the others. That's how I've gotten around this demon of painting.
I would say that the psyche, like it was in the 1970's where painting was dead, has got to be honest and say that you stop painting because you've got nothing further to say. It means that you are dead for that time. So I would say that installations are fun, but they are easier than painting. Painting's hard - it's easier to do installations because you can play with words, concept and 'found' material. This may be saying that painting has got tired for the moment, and I would say yes, it probably has.
If you put my work up against Mondrian, you'd probably say "where has Phil gone?' I'm a good sergeant, but Mondrian is the general. I don't mind being aquainted with that."
The original interview was published in CoCA, June 1997 ISSN:1174-0426 www.coca.org.nz
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