After living and working in Auckland for 40 years, Dick Frizzell relocated to Haumoana, Hawke’s Bay in 2003. His immersion in a landscape at once familiar from his youth and so patently different from the hubbub of the inner city, rekindled a desire to paint himself back into the landscape. The landscape, Ocean Beach, belongs to a series of paintings celebrating the unique features of the area. Traditional landscape paintings of Te Mata Peak and Cape Kidnappers are joined by more quirky representations of roadside fruit stall signs. They consist of little more than a rough shelter and an honesty box and their positions are noted well in advance by the basic hand-painted signs offering plums, pumpkins and caulis! This painting depicts the view along Ocean Beach overlooked by Frizzell’s home and studio. The work is diffused with a pink glow, a hazy aura of warmth, and the salt-saturated air blurs our long-distance view of the peaks beyond. The extreme foreground with its weather-beaten macrocarpas and solitary farm dwelling is crisp in comparison: the yellowing pasture testament to the long hot summers. Hamish Keith states in the recent publication Dick Frizzell: The Painter, “It is never difficult to see where his work is coming from, or the larger things it might be about. There’s a robust joy in what he does... It is this confident sense of belonging that makes Dick Frizzell’s work so comforting.” 1. Dick Frizzell, Dick Frizzell, The Painter. Godwit Publishing, 2009. Pg 17.