Glenda at Tahakopa

This is a portrait of Robin White’s friend Glenda, a primary school teacher and fellow member of the Otago Baha’i community. Glenda appears in two of White’s works. The first is a watercolour, where she is pictured by Portobello harbour. Here she stands in front of the Tahakopa railway station, a settlement near the Catlins in Southern Otago. In both paintings Glenda wears the same blouse and a pendant with the Bahá’i ringstone symbol. This symbol also appears on brooches worn by Robin and her mother in other works of this time.

Glenda at Tahakopa marks an ambitious shift in White’s practice in the late 1970s where her paintings began to increase in scale. This painting was first exhibited at Wellington’s Peter McLeavey Gallery alongside another large oil painting Sam Hunt at the Portobello Pub. Both works are emblematic of her pursuit to depict the people she knew, in the places they live.

White was drawn to the Tahakopa railway station as an emblem of small-town New Zealand. The work evokes Rita Angus’s 1936 painting Cass, of a remote Canterbury railway station. It also reflects White’s ongoing interest in painting simple, everyday buildings seen across Aotearoa – such as the local pub in Mangaweka (1973) and the local takeaway in Fish and Chips, Maketu (1975). In all of these works she has paid particular attention to the signs that adorn the buildings.

See other works:

Robin White, Glenda at Portabello: http://www.adamartgallery.org.nz/history_feature/robin-white/
Robin White, Sam Hunt at the Portabello Pub: http://collection.dunedin.art.museum/search.do?view=detail&page=1&id=37667&db=object
Rita Angus, Cass: https://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/collection/69-74/rita-angus/cass 
Robin White, Mangaweka: https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/50830
Robin White, Fish and Chips, Maketu: https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/explore-art-and-ideas/artwork/4244/fish-and-chips-maketu?q=%2Fexplore-art-and-ideas%2Fartwork%2F4244%2Ffish-and-chips-maketu