Jeanne Macaskill
“There is an atavistic or visceral pull about the junction of the land and the sea which is easier to record in art than to describe in words. Nobody excels like Jeanne Macaskill in evoking this mysterious and magical property of the shoreline, summed up by the line of the horizon, the gnarled rocks with their sculpted surfaces, and the shifting light.
In part it is a personal evocation drawn from a childhood lived across the road from the beach near Motueka. She moved from there to grow up mainly in Wellington, to train as a teacher and art advisor, and took herself off to graduate from the Chelsea School of Art in London and to reclaim her French ancestry. She painted, exhibited and taught art in London, married and began to put down roots in the south of France, potentially another expatriate artist, until after seventeen years a change in her life caused her to return to Wellington in 1971. Since then she has continued to paint and exhibit both with groups and personally. She has been unstinting in helping others to develop their artistic skills and has been a Vice President of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts. In 2004 she was recognised for her work in the arts and the community by the award of Membership of the New Zealand Order of Merit.” Don Aimer (July, 2008)
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