From painter to drummer and back again
The Brushes to Brushes exhibition opened recently at Cromwell Museum, featuring 16 paintings from Bruce Aitken. The Invercargill-born drummer and artist has a special place in his heart for Otago and has recently relocated to Cromwell and rediscovered his love of painting.
Aitken describes himself as blessed when it comes to his skills. He started drawing and painting when he was very young and by the time he was in high school he was excited to take art as his main subject.
“I was under the tutorage of the art teacher at Southland Boys High School, Patricia Wilson. She was a really good artist from the Southland/Invercargill region,” Aitken says. “She gave us ideas and my memories are that she would just encourage us to do what we felt, and then she would come along and make suggestions. That’s about the only training I’ve ever had, as far as I can recall.”
He developed a special relationship with our region as he would regularly visit a family-friend’s farm in Queensbury. He also spend Christmases in Queenstown, camping at the bottom of what is now the Skyline gondola.
During the tail end of his school years his family moved up to Wellington where Aitken discovered art was a subject that people did if they didn’t want to do anything else. He didn’t let this discourage him, and all the while was playing music, particularly drums. His music career took him on tours, mostly around the greater Wellington region at that time, as he painted in between gigs.
“Once the 80s came along I started to spend quite a bit of time back in the South Island, and spent a lot of time down in Cromwell. When I came down here I started painting again quite often.”
Initially Aitken didn’t really like oil painting – he didn’t understand them. His focus was on watercolours and he started selling them in a local shop. He then went back into music, putting the brushes down and headed over to Melbourne, then lived in Canada for 10 years.
Fast forward to Covid when he was living in Sydney and started getting back into art – drawing with pencil and charcoal. He worked on a project called Legends of New Zealand Music, which is now up on his website.
“A year ago I came over to visit friends in Cromwell and, I don’t know, something happened, and I thought ‘oh wow, look at all this scenery,’ and it brought back so many memories, because it’s just such a very special place for me. Always has been, always will be.”
At this time, some people Aitken was visiting pulled out some of his old artworks – he didn’t recognise them.
“It was a drawing I’d done of their house back in the 80s, and I remembered doing that. Then he handed me another one – it was an oil painting of the Bannockburn Church, and I said ‘well, who did that?’ He said ‘Bruce, you did that.’ I had a look and there was my name, and I don’t remember painting it.”
It was a really good painting – he was surprised and motivated to do it, and do it better. He was visiting for three weeks and ended up taking over 2,000 photos, inspired to get back into it and do an exhibition in Sydney. He went back, sold his equipment and dedicated all his time to painting non-stop. Eight artworks were created in this time, and it wasn’t long until the obvious decision to relocate here came about.
“It’s changed my life, for the better too, I might add. It’s so good to be living back in New Zealand and it’s extremely good living in Central Otago, that’s for sure.”
The paintings continued and they’re what make up the current exhibition. It’s called Brushes to Brushes as a nod to his time in music – switching out paint brushes for drum brushes and vice versa. He’s often asked questions about his process or how he achieved something, but Aitken says he doesn’t always know what the answer is.
“It just comes out and that comes out as good. I don’t have any logical reason as to why, all I know is that I can do it and I really love doing it and this is now what I’m doing. I’m grateful that I’ve been given this opportunity to have the exhibition.”
Brushes to Brushes will run at Cromwell Museum until this Thursday, 27 February. You can find out more information about Bruce, check out the paintings included in the exhibition and keep informed with what he’s doing at dbaart.com
