Don McAra

Don has been painting and drawing all of his life, and full-time since 1987. He received tuition from Dunedin's Harry Miller and in Christchurch, briefly, from Doris Lusk.

Influences have been Bill Sutton's and Austen Dean's work, but also the broader traditional European art inheritance.

Since leaving a career in teaching at Linwood and the College of Education, and despite a lack of interest in competitions, Don has won several awards from the Centre of Contemporary Art (CoCA), Ashburton Art Awards, and the Otago Art Society.

Don has been a member of Watercolour New Zealand for some time and was asked by them this year to send a work to an International Watercolour Exhibition in Perth, along with other leading New Zealand watercolourists.

The majority of Don's work remains in New Zealand, but it is also in private collections in Europe, North America, and Japan. Don has exhibited in galleries in Dunedin and Christchurch (see above for current exhibitions).

Although much of Don's work is representational, he has also worked in abstraction which informs his sense of design.

When creating an artwork, Don enjoys the co-ordination of hand, eye, and perception that make up a good drawing and composition. He enjoys applying paint, not so much as a subject matter in its own right, but as a medium for communicating quite simply and directly what is before him or in his imagination.