Devonport artist

Max Thomson depicts Devonport in landscapes that are at once familiar, but conjure up moody vistas through the use of heavily textured brush strokes.

“These things are all there, but I’ve reimagined them,” is how the artist puts it.

The evocative imagery and play of light and shadow make extra sense when Thomson talks of his transition from a long and noteworthy career in photography to painting. From the the 1970s on, he focused on fashion shoots and advertising work; now, it’s his beloved neighbourhood.

His latest exhibition – titled The Walk, because it includes scenes he spotted when out with his dog Barley – will open at Depot Artspace next week. It is the first he has held locally. Included in around 18 paintings Thomson will hang are impressionistic views of parks and pathways, homes and gardens.

It is not easy to guess that one menacingly dark treescape is on the Waitemata Golf Course.

“I start with something that’s appealing for some reason, the landscape, and then stay fairly true to it and move it around and make it my own.”

There’s Cambridge Tce reframed and a sunnier Arts and Crafts house on King Edward Pde, glimpsed between cypress trees. Cypress are also planted at the side of the hillside home Thomson has lived in for 10 years.

The owner of another character villa with a topiary garden may not immediately recognise the home, given Thomson has exercised his artistic licence to expand the front yard into Renaissance-style proportions. A side view of the Art Deco apartments on the corner above the Victoria Theatre proves simpler for a viewer to locate.

Thomson says he did not set out to do a Devonport exhibition. It evolved over several years. His studio – in a front room filled with art and books and with canvases propped against walls – is on the opposite side of the home’s

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