Provenance:

Private Collection, Auckland

Purchased from Fine Art Auction, International Art Centre, Auckland, 05/03/1999

Michael Smither's daughter Sarah was three at the time he painted this engaging work: a painting which can best be described as belonging to the category of domestic, fantastic realism. Sarah's birth in 1964 marked a turning point in Smither's own artistic philosophy and from that time we see his work assuming a more sentimental, vulnerably inclined focus, reflecting his own experience of family life.

Sarah has been depicted quite literally, as a Cabbage Patch Kid. Tiny, blonde and ensconced in the garden. Her clothes and the blue-green brilliance of her eyes, make her at one with the environs - both with the anchoring blue of the garden wall, and the vivid, lush green of the cabbages. As observers of this painting, we sense is that she is not merely a child playing with her friend in the garden, but a product of nature itself, a being who is entirely at home among the cabbages. To contribute to this, Smither has distorted scale to such an extent that it is impossible to rationalise: Sarah is improbably tiny, and doesn't even rise above the cabbages surrounding her. There is another layer of awe and discovery within this work, and that is of Sarah's own relationship with nature. In the same way Smither has articulated his desire to capture the beauty and wonder of his own reality as a father through the act of this painting, he has also documented Sarah's awe-filled experience and budding relationship with nature, as she quite literally attempts to capture, nurture and understand it in her own way - the bug on a leaf, in a jar.

The New Zealand realist revival, of which Smither was a leading figure is herein beautifully encapsulated. The triumph of this work lies in the poetic juxtaposition which Smither has struck between a deeply intimate and sentimental portrait, and the formally-detached plasticity and modular realism of the scene.