PROVENANCE Private Collection, Taranaki Purchased directly from artist, 1969

Lovers, Dolphin and Yellow Ball is a joyful, buoyant painting. A portrayal of two bodies in water intercepted by a swimming dolphin and a floating ball, it demonstrates Smither's affinity for movement and touch. Time has been suspended to emphasise this: there is the yellow ball about to be pressed and bob against the woman's hand; her arm reaching up through the air; legs and torsos dragging through water; the dolphin's long nose splicing the water.

For some viewers, this work may call to mind the famous 1950s summer of Opo, the friendly bottleneck dolphin. In January 1969, Maurice Shadbolt published his book This Summer's Dolphin, based on the story of Opo. The author and his wife had encountered the dolphin in Opononi Harbour, swimming and playing with her in the summer of early 1956. Smither was a friend of Shadbolt's, and agreed to design the dust jacket for the novel.

To prepare for the commission, the artist undertook a period of research, which he describes as a steep learning curve in interspecies communication. Several of the resulting dolphin works and paintings were exhibited at Barry Lett Galleries in 1968, including a series of prints, Dolphins and Lovers. The final dust jacket bears similarities to this painting: it shows a child riding Opo, held gently by a man who guides them through the shallow water

The same sense of intimate exchange between human and dolphin is present in this work. More than anything, one is struck by a feeling of uninhibited freedom - freedom that is about more than just the presence of naked bodies, but rather about how we move through the world and relate to each other, and to nature.

I discovered Maurice Shadbolt's work in the Anglican Chaplaincy in Wellington while I was taking a spell from a colour glass window of the transfiguration of Christ with his apostles, which I'd accidentally just broken. From the chaplain's library I read The New Zealanders and was moved to write to Maurice and tell him how much I enjoyed it. I sensed in him a kindred spirit and great storyteller and we begun a long and fruitful friendship.

As part of my research to draw and paint dolphins for a dust jacket commission for Maurice Shadbolt's novel, This Summer's Dolphin, I went through a steep learning curve in interspecies communication. I prepared a slate board to draw dolphins underwater (at the Napier Aquarium). They crowded round me to get a look over my shoulder as I worked. I'm certain that they recognised themselves.

Michael Smither Michael Smither Painter, Trish Gribben, Ron Sang Publications 2004