Cityscape sits down with iconic Kiwi artist Dick Frizzell to get the inside word on his latest exhibition Something To Behold!, inspiration, charity work and handling tough critics. 

How did you come up with the name for Something To Behold!? It’s just a corny exclamation that people make when they see something arresting… like a sunset or some such… and I was hoping to make a painting, or paintings, that had that instant, unmediated affect. The works are inspired by Walter Foster’s How to Draw and Paint books.

What drew you to them? The best of the Walter Foster artists were chosen for their ability to nail those famous archetypes, or clichés, if you will. They were about as far as you could go from ‘Fine Art’ at the time. By taking these ‘forbidden subjects’ and enlarging them to a sort of Pop-Art scale I felt I was saying something new about what ‘art’ in 2018 might be. And there are no copyright issues because Walter’s whole philosophy was: ‘Here you are, give it a go!’

Tell us about your favourite piece? Well, there’s a few, but I guess the wave image (above) in the advertising would have to be a favourite. It has the lot, the mad sunset/sunrise colours, the light through the waves, the drama of the spray… something to behold, in fact! Mind you, the brand new flower painting How to Paint Roses is pretty rich! And they do take a while to paint, which is half the point in a curious way… half the (hopefully) wow factor is in the production, like watching the latest Jurassic Park.

Pop-tinged, Kiwiana nostalgia is a recurring theme in your work – when did you realise this was a winning combination? Pretty early on, though the first ‘Kiwiana’ paintings in the early 80s didn’t go down well. It all looks rosy now, but it was rough going for a while there.

Tell us about your favourite commission? Painting that scooter for Mike King’s I Am Hope rally was a good one! Actually though, I think that the Hundertwasser Tiki I produced as a fundraiser for the Whangarei Hundertwasser Museum is one of my more significant productions. It’s raising thousands! All charity work.

What is the trademark Frizzell-ism that makes your work instantly recognisable? That I don’t know. If I did I wouldn’t do the ones that don’t work.

What instigates or inspires how you approach each new collection? Communication, quite deliberately looking for cut-through. It’s an unhealthy obsession.

What piece of art do you wish was hanging on the wall in your lounge? A large rendering of a New Zealand Steamship Company freighter like the ones my father crewed on in the early 1940s – and it is hanging in my lounge – one of the first of the Something To Behold! paintings, a very big oil painting of a small watercolour painting in a book of ships dad gave me when I was a boy.

What are you working on now? A very large landscape of the King Country. All those sheep-tracks are making me blind!

Any plans to design more toys along the lines of the KiWi KiWi? Yes, and it’s at prototype stage. Looking very exciting, but too early to reveal.

What’s the worst thing someone has said about your work and how did you respond? A grumpy critic once said my work was 'shallow, populist and too readily understood', I took it as a compliment.

Something To Behold!, The Central Art Gallery, until Aug 26, thecentral.co.nz