Painting our maritime history

Words: Adrienne Matthews

Maritime artists in the classic realism style are something of a rarity in today’s world but local Nelson artist Sean Garwood has embraced the genre with passion and skill. As each of his exhibitions unfold it is becoming obvious that he is one of the most accomplished and exciting marine artists the world has seen.

“Maritime art is much more than the ocean, ships, harbours and wharves it depicts,” he says. “It records a vital part of the history of our civilization. It is about voyages to distant lands, adventure and discovery and the movement of peoples. It is about trade and naval power, the forces of the oceans and the skill of shipbuilding. Sadly not many artists have the patience or time to develop the mastery required to undertake this type of complex, time-consuming art.”

At twenty-one years of age and the youngest ever New Zealand deep sea master, Sean graduated to captain of trawlers and spent twenty-eight years at sea, many of them in the wilds of the Southern Ocean. Encouraged by his father, the late Michael Garwood, himself a fine marine artist, Sean was never without his sketchbook and had it instilled in him from a young age that ‘the foundation of good art is drawing.’ His years of sketching were sound preparation for when the time came to forgo his sea legs and take up the role of full-time artist. Self-taught, he spent the first five years of his painting career teaching himself everything he could about painting in his chosen, classic realism style.

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1. 'Early Golden Years, Waka and sailing ships, Golden Bay 1843' was the last to be completed for Sean's exhibition 'A Painted Voyage'. | 2. Sean spends many hours painting from his home studio in Atawhai. | 3. Following Sean's 2015 trip to Antarctica with Antarctica New Zealand and Antarctic Heritage Trust, NZ Post issued a collector suite of stamps featuring his paintings. | 4. Shackleton's Nimrod hut, oil on canvas. Painted by Sean after his trip to Antarctica in 2015. | 5. Sean paints all his artworks not from photos, but from visualizing a scene and researching Aotearoa's history.

Blessed to be a recipient of Antarctica New Zealand’s Community Engagement Programme, Sean was able to travel to the icy continent in 2015 and spend time sketching Sir Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott’s huts, producing, as a result, a sell-out exhibition of paintings two years later. This body of work included paintings of Scott’s ship “Terra Nova” and Shackleton’s “Nimrod”, and when he was contemplating a new project his agent, Grant Bezett, was quick to suggest marine painting should be his obvious choice. “It’s where you come from, what you know, where you feel comfortable, and there are very few maritime artists left in the world,” he said. “I had never imagined there would be a market for this kind of work but how wrong I was,” says Sean, as he embarked on a new series of works, ‘A Painted Voyage’, which documented the rich maritime history of New Zealand, including such diverse subjects as waka and sailing ships in Golden Bay 1843, the Tamihene entering Tory Channel 1926 and Lyttleton Port 1892. “My big disappointment is that we don’t recognise our maritime history as much as we should,” he says. “We are a maritime nation because we are an island. This country was built by mariners but unfortunately, much of this history has been forgotten and it should be a lot more acknowledged. I hope in my own small way to be able to bring more of it to light,” he says. Doing so is extraordinarily challenging and what gets Sean into his studio every morning by 5.15 am. “If I can get a few good hours in before breakfast I feel set for the day,” he says. He works eight-hour days and doesn’t stop at the weekends except to work for a few hours outdoors on the family’s property with his wife Ligliana. “I am grateful that she is so tolerant and such a rock behind the scenes,” he says. “There is no substitute for unconditional support from your closest friend. I am a bit of a recluse but Ligliana understands that is the only way I can accomplish the work I do.” Each painting requires endless hours of meticulous preparation. “When you are painting sailing ships you have to really scrutinize the ship’s plans,” explains Sean. It’s not just painting the ship. You have to understand every detail of the boat’s rigging and so I’ve developed a comprehensive library full of ships’ plans showing the various types of riggings. There have been some very generous mariners in Nelson who have helped me with the research, lovely people who have been extraordinarily kind in giving their view on certain aspects. There is no substitute for experience. Some are in their eighties and have knowledge that is priceless.” “There is a synergy between ships and the ocean that you can’t make up,” he continues. “You need to have experienced first-hand the power of those big bodies of water. As I paint, the memories of my time at sea come out onto the canvas. The relationship between the ship and the ocean is very important and you must also be able to draught a ship from every angle so that you can portray the ship accurately. That is extremely hard to do but the people who purchase maritime art really know their stuff. You have to be technically correct but also never lose the poetry of a painting.” “No one can teach you how to paint the ocean,” he continues. “You have to have a deep understanding of its various moods. There’s an old saying that says you must have lived and worked on the sea to be able to paint the sea. The ocean is regarded as the most difficult subject to paint because you must make the water look wet and that is challenging. It has many colours and you need to understand its movement, the swells, the sea foam and the way waves break.” Sean’s paintings have twice been chosen to grace the nation’s stamps with one issue depicting paintings from his Antarctica series and, this year, another showcasing historic ships of the nineteenth century. Represented exclusively by the Jonathan Grant Gallery in Auckland, Sean is delighted that his paintings appeal as equally to women as men. “At one exhibition I had three women all vying for one painting,” he laughs. “There is something about the mystique of the southern ocean that particularly seems to appeal because so few people are actually able to go there.” Following the success of his last exhibition, Sean is already underway with a new series of work. “I am obsessed with painting and am excited to start on my next project which should keep me busy for at least the next couple of years,” he says. Not quite ready to announce the theme, he will however confirm that it will be another great maritime series. You have to be a master of your craft to navigate an ocean-going vessel through swells that are many metres high, and you also have to be a master to create paintings as intricate and spellbinding as the ones Sean is bringing to life. His deep commitment and adeptness at the first has stood him in excellent stead to succeed at the second.