Internationally acclaimed artist Mark Cross demonstrates a powerful sense of location and vernacular, painting a precise and insightful distillation of the Otago landscape.

Cross’s achievement as a realist painter is superb. His work is characterised by the sharp depiction of the natural environment, "a tribute to the painter’s highly developed skills and meticulous draughtsmanship." (1) Previously the figure has dominated Cross’s landscapes. The absence of the figure in Cross’s new body of work; Wide Island: New Paintings of Central Otago, does not leave a void, but strengthens a sense of the intense relationship New Zealander’s share with their local environment.

"A magic realist, Cross’s technical approach is obsessive and meticulous. Every stone, stick, blade of grass…is given equal weight and attention." (2) Cross depicts fastidiously detailed scenes that manage to capture a sense of time, place and season. He conveys the landscape in his own distinct palette with a unique concern for the atmospheric.

The New Zealand landscape is an established and traditional subject matter throughout New Zealand’s history. With respect to genre, there is a clear link between artists such as Grahame Sydney and Brent Wong. Unlike the uninhabited landscapes of Wong or Sydney, the presence of mankind remains strong in Cross’s paintings. "If not actually there, their marks are recent – we know that they will pass that way again soon." (3) There is a pervasive sense the works are inhabited, not only by those who live there, but also by the viewer who is invited to participate, to walk the barren Otago plains, to be included in the experience.

1. T.J. McNamara, “The Galleries: A View From Afar of Primeval Landscapes,” New Zealand Herald, May 15, 2003.
2. Warwick Brown, “Mark Cross, Seventeen Years of Painting,” Art New Zealand, Autumn 2003, No. 106.
3. Ibid.