Bluescape

John Drawbridge painted Bluescape in London, but he was inspired by memories of New Zealand’s coastal landscape. Two horizontal panels of colour allude to sea and sky, while the framing vertical panels suggest a door – perhaps a metaphor for distance or memory.

Drawbridge said that his paintings were an attempt to ‘describe some sort of limited space or depth’. He was a master of abstraction but, as one British critic said, ‘one is made continually aware of the natural forms from which his paintings are derived, vibrating just below the surface of the abstract image’.

John Drawbridge, 1971