In this striking image of fern fronds silhouetted against a bright blue sky, Michael Smither shows his remarkable ability to extract something individual and arresting from everyday subjects. Whether they are man-made things, like a friend’s bright blue flipper, or natural forms like worn rocks on the New Plymouth seashore, Smither is able to make us see them afresh and with added impact. Surely it is his remarkable vision and powers of selection combined with his technical skills as a painter and colourist that contribute to his achievement. In an age saturated with photographic imagery, he still manages to capture our attention and make his images enduring and meaningful. This ability appeared right at the start of his career and has continued without faltering to the present day, over a period of 50 years. His work has defied art trends and fashions and is based on what he sees and celebrates in the world around him. Viewed as a whole, his work encapsulates much that makes living in New Zealand the unique, sometimes quirky experience we all can recognise but are often unable to define. Fern Fronds takes as its subject one of the most common types of flora in New Zealand: the bracken fern of the asplenium genus. Instead of showing the fronds in characteristic full leaf, Smither depicts the stems arching upwards in graceful curving movements and the crowns producing new leaves. It is the living, growing plant he captures not a botanical specimen or a still life in a vase. Here he has affinities with his predecessor Rita Angus who often chose to paint her studies of flowers and flora growing in the garden so that their organic nature was manifest. Like Smither, she too could extract that extra dimension from her subjects, defining them with precision and bringing out the essential forms and colours by a process of reduction and analysis. To give impact, Smither has back lit the stems and unfurling fronds achieving a strong contrast between the shadowed and the lit areas against the blue sky. Though unseen, the sun is a major force in the painting and its light and warmth vital ingredients in the growth and vigour of the fern. This is an image of nature nourished by clean air and light and tinged by the blue of the sky that is unmistakably of this country and the South Pacific. A comparable bracken fern appears in Smither’s triptych Star Wars of 1988; he described it as an image of peace in contrast to the apocalyptic central figure of Reagan whose eyes are transformed into nuclear missiles blinding him to the destructive consequences of his political ambitions. Seen in this context, Smither shows another affinity with Rita Angus as pacifist and himself as an artist willing to use his art to promote values he cares about and believes in passionately. These added layers of meaning enter the work unobtrusively and help to give it significance that goes beyond realist concerns. Michael Dunn