New paintings of the Port Hills
Wayne Seyb
2 March - 5 April 2025
A masterful series of new paintings by Wayne Seyb, created over a year of travelling up on the gondola, capturing the intensity of his response to the landscape, and birdlife, in and around the Port Hills near Christchurch. He is well known for his expressive paintings of the Canterbury and other landscapes, but the gondola up to the top of Mount Cavendish offered a new perspective on the familiar.
Sold
In early 2024, Seyb’s daughter bought him a year-long gondola pass, enabling an artistic adventure that continued into early 2025. With a pack full of paints and brushes, and a travelling case for the canvas, he would seek out a slope or rocky outcrop to give himself space to look, and paint. Or walk for an hour along a track to a remote new viewpoint of familiar places.
‘I had no preconceived idea of what I would do. I was looking for a kind of ideal – a oneness with nature. I didn’t take long to find it… the place, the light, everything I see is vital.’
The exhibition From the Gondola brings together a selection of the high-energy paintings from that year-long journey. Of necessity, he couldn’t take large canvasses, so this exhibition is anchored by the earlier, glorious Port Hills, Charteris Bay – plus a vigorous homage to Vincent Van Gogh, long an inspiration.