Responses to the Artwork
DreamSeed, Oil On Canvas, 24 x 24”, 2025
DreamSeed Response
by David Mealing,
Retired Museum Director of Te Whare Whakaaro o Pito-one/Petone Settlers Museum, Petone, Wellington, NZ 4/2/2025
In the context of dreams, seeds often symbolize potential, new beginnings, fertility, and the nurturing of ideas and dreams. They can represent the seeds of future realities, requiring cultivation and care to blossom. They also represent the dormant yet powerful potential for growth and transformation. They suggest that the seed dreamer is on the cusp of new opportunities or experiences. A seed planted in a dreamer’s mind will germinate new life experiences.
In this ‘Dream Seed’ painting Kerri McGill has created a work which is all about the above, and in the act of dreaming has created a ‘virtual space’ for the viewer to explore and inhabit in which detailed, realistic sensory information has been processed by the artist’s brain and sensibilities to produce virtual actions. These actions identify transitional spaces and movements in time and space to provide avenues for investigation and exploration…. Continue…
Sensing and Feeling, The “Lightscapes” Paintings of Kerri McGill
by David Mealing,
Retired Museum Director of Te Whare Whakaaro o Pito-one/Petone Settlers Museum, Petone, Wellington, NZ 6/27/2025
Kerri McGill’s ‘Lightscapes’ paintings are a collective body of work that convey strong emotions and feelings, often inspired by nature, memories, and personal experiences. She aims to translate these feelings into her art, using abstract forms and vibrant colours to evoke sensations rather than simply representing visual reality. Her paintings are less about depicting specific scenes and more about capturing the emotional essence of a place or experience. They express her personal values, empathy and love.
In general, sensing refers to the act of perceiving through the five senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch). It includes the ability to perceive subtle details and practical information from the external world. Feeling, in contrast, often relates to emotional responses and how one experiences and processes emotions, both their own and those of others. It is a way of making decisions based on values and personal connections…. Continue...Paddocks as Sky
by David Mealing,
Retired Museum Director of Te Whare Whakaaro o Pito-one/Petone Settlers Museum, Petone, Wellington, NZ 6/27/2025”
This painting, by its title, gives the viewer the first insight into the work. It is a painting that is at the outer reaches of perception, and is a work that dissolves form and content into a new construct that explores depths of meaning within and without the work. It requires an enquiring study and investigation to reveal its inner truth, and its outer layers of conceptual and aesthetic understanding.
Like all intelligent works of art, it releases its insights gradually and offers the opportunity for the viewer to take time to consider and reflect upon the inherent layers of meaning in the work. The painting is in the process of transforming nature and redefining itself, as it moves within transitional spaces commensurate with the artists desire and intention to reach new levels of awareness. This is achieved by extending her proactive mindset and trust in her creative abilities to achieve positive, optimistic, and new self-referential and far-reaching viewer outcomes. …Continue…
‘Moving Through Unseen Borders’
by David Mealing,
Retired Museum Director of Te Whare Whakaaro o Pito-one/Petone Settlers Museum, Petone, Wellington, NZ 3/12/2025
The ‘Moving Through Unseen Borders’ painting by Kerri McGill is a major work of art. It works successfully on a number of levels. It is thoughtful, considered, intelligent, true to its subject matter, and aesthetically expertly realized and resolved. The structured and underlaid tile-like map composition works effectively and well, and the dominant ‘emerald’ and ‘aquamarine’ lights in the painting glow. It unashamedly and successfully shows the influence of the symbolist painter Gustav Klimt. The painting’s patina emits a light, luster and sheen which symbolically evokes hope and a positive outcome…. Continue…