He may be in his early 80s, and for health reasons no longer welcoming walk-ins at his downtown studio, but there’s no slowing local artist Robert Currie’s productivity as he strives to create something of a lasting legacy through his iconic Raglan paintings.
Robert – who’s worked for years now from his home studio, the unmissable Pink Palace at the top of James St – still regularly dons an apron and paints on just about anything he can get hold of, from canvas boards to surfboards, roller blinds and old vinyl records.
He paints mainly for his own pleasure, he says, but selling his art also brings great satisfaction. “Because I am a pensioner it gives me something to do but it also gives me dollars to do other things – like buying an extra coffee,” he laughs.
Robert’s now bringing earlier works that depict the Raglan he loves out of storage and selling them too. One of the latest is ‘Bridal Veil Falls’, painted back in 2009 on a roller blind and currently on display at Orca Eatery & Bar.
“You can dine under the falls without getting wet!” he quips.
Although it will remain on the wall at Orca for a while longer, Robert is delighted to have sold the work – just two hours after having displayed it – to a Raglan resident.
He feels similarly about ‘Footbridge to Rangitahi’, another large roller blind artwork done a few years ago which also sold locally after going on show at Orca.
Robert loves it when his artwork stays in town. “I can go and see it every now and again,” he reckons.
The footbridge painting on the blind was such a big hit, Robert recalls,that it inspired him to also do a run of limited edition prints. “And bugger-me-days,” he exclaims, “55 of an unframed batch of 175 have now sold!”
Quite a few Rangitahi residents are buying them for display in their new houses on the peninsula, he says. For some, it’s a fond reminder of the rickety structure which provided the only public access across to Rangitahi when the tide was in.
The old footbridge is also of quite some historical significance to Robert himself.
As a stock agent for Dalgety and Company, well before coming to live in Raglan back in the early 2000s, Robert crossed the causeway many times at low tide to draft the Strawbridge family’s stock for sale.
“On three occasions I was caught out by the rising tide and had to walk back to Raglan over this footbridge until the tide went out (to retrieve my vehicle),” he recalls.
Returning to Raglan in 1988 as a land agent for Wrightson Real Estate, he was the person who negotiated the sale of Rangitahi to the present owners.
“And that (association with the peninsula) is the reason I have painted this icon of Raglan history,” he explains.
It was only once he came to Raglan to live that Robert became more than just the “closet artist” he considered himself. A chance meeting with sisters Vera and Nora Van der Voorden, who ran the then Te Uku Gallery (now Raglan Roast Office), convinced him to have an exhibition there.
Come opening night he sold a dozen paintings, and he’s never looked back.
Robert reckons in fact, that art “saved my life”. He’d been recently widowed and was deeply depressed at the time, but painting gave him the motivation to get up in the morning.
Robert is also particularly proud of his 2010 depiction of the wharf fire, ‘Raglan Burning’. He heard the fire sirens from his home on James St and was on hand to witness the devastating event.
His finished painting was bought by the Gallagher family in Hamilton and donated to Raglan & District Museum in 2012.
More recently, he is proud to say his first abstract painting – but one with an easily discernible outline of Mt Karioi – was selected for the cover of UK publication ‘Personal Bests Journal’, a twice-yearly collection of short stories chosen and submitted by their authors as their lifetime bests.
“Not a bad achievement for a self-taught artist,” grins Robert, who gets a share of copyright fees.
Last week Robert was putting the finishing touches to ‘The Dance of the Orcas’, a work he is painting – fittingly – on a surfboard. He says he’s looking forward to putting it on display and getting some feedback.
But there’ll be no more welcoming of impromptu visitors to his studio, even though it’s something the sociable Robert Currie has relished over the years. Because of ongoing respiratory problems he’s now closed the Pink Palace to walk-ins in a bid to protect his health, having trod very carefully all through the lockdowns and avoided Covid.
He’ll carry on displaying his work around town and on social media. “I also have a huge collection on computer and will continue to sell signed prints which people can come and see by appointment.”
Robert believes that’s what buyers want. “Far better to tell your grandchildren you met the artist when you bought the artwork.”
And Robert’s hopes for the future? That his work will have relevance for generations to come. “But who knows what will be in 100 years’ time,” adds the affable octogenarian. “Raglan’s changing fast.”
By Edith Symes
