Rick Edmonds

    Growing up as a child in the headwaters of the Pelorus Sound, New Zealand, filled me with the longing to follow the seagulls and outgoing tide to the open sea. Huge logs from the Pelorus River would float past our house and I would leap upon them in the hope that they would carry me to a far-off sparkling sea with islands, pirates and treasure. My hopes were always thwarted by distraught parents who would pluck me to safety before rising seas or nightfall overcame me.

    Then came the inevitable succession of wooden dinghys, in various stages of disrepair, but I never seemed able to develop the man-power necessary to row the distance.

    Eventually, I acquired both the boat and the companions to make many voyages of discovery and adventure in the Narnia-like world that is the Marlborough Sounds.

    After having sailed many seas, and scaled many summits, a calm day with clear skies and bright light, still sets my heart yearning to be out on the Sound. There is nowhere else that so compels me. This sense of longing, and of belonging, motivates my art. It is an attempt to celebrate the unique combination of light, land, wind, and ocean. In this sense my paintings are not "scenes", though they are of recognizable features, but rather a statement, each in its own way monumental, of what is the Marlborough Sounds.

    In many my own presence is acknowledged by the ripples of my passing vessel It is my signature upon the sea.

    I paint full-time, and work in either oils, or acrylic and air-brush. My work is represented in many public and private collections in NZ and around the world. As well as gallery paintings, I produce work on commission, and undertake many large-format murals. I live and work from Moenui, on the Queen Charlotte Drive, Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand.

 The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
 The furrow followed free:
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.
 

... Day after day, day after day
We stuck, not breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

                                   The Ancient Mariner