Moths on the window

This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).

The elegant simplicity of Eileen Mayo’s Moths on the window is deceptive. This relief print of stylised moths crawling over a window was one of the most experimental and ambitious works of her career.
Mayo created this print over a period of nine months, using ten separate printing blocks and a range of found materials to create the delicate texture of the moth wings and antennae. She first experimented with materials like Maggi soup packets and crumpled cardboard to create the right texture, but it was bits of old lace and dried ferns which achieved the desired effect. The shimmering tonal blues of the background were equally precise, created from a customised combination of watercolour, arrowroot, detergent, Dylon dyes, writing ink and poster paint — a concoction Mayo described as ‘a real witch’s brew’.1 Finally, she applied silver ink to the wings by hand, giving them an additional luminescence.

Mayo was an English-born artist who migrated to New Zealand in 1962, after spending nearly a decade working as an artist and designer in Australia. In her early years, Mayo studied linocut techniques under the influential printmaker Claude Flight at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London, earning acclaim within the avant-garde printmaking movement of the late 1920s and 1930s. She maintained this willingness to experiment throughout her career as she moved between different styles, techniques and countries.

The one constant throughout Mayo’s life, however, was her fascination with nature. In New Zealand, the flora and fauna of her new country became a key interest, and she grew an elaborate garden at her suburban Christchurch home in order to closely observe flowers, birds and insects. Although Mayo also worked in painting and design, it is in prints like this that her reverence for nature translates most intimately, allowing her to capture the subtle textures and patterns she observed. Moths on the window in particular demonstrates how Mayo applied her internationally acclaimed printmaking skills to local subject matter, helping to increase respect for the underappreciated medium in New Zealand.

Chelsea Nichols

1 Eileen Mayo, quoted in Jillian Cassidy, ‘Shifting boundaries: The art of Eileen Mayo’, PhD thesis, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, 2000, pp. 93–94.