A Kiwi in Venice

Artist: Graham Percy
Date: 2004
Media: pencil, pen and ink on paper
Dimensions: 255 × 355 mm
Catalogue number: 2015–1–01
Credit line: Gift of the Graham Percy Trust, 2015

This drawing was exhibited at Mahara Gallery in A Micronaut in the Wide World, The Imaginative life and Times of Graham Percy, an exhibition of drawings by New Zealand artist and illustrator Graham Percy. The exhibition included a suite of anthropomorphic kiwis who travel around the world and through time—a marvellously inventive, anarchic exploration of the national psyche. Percy was a virtuoso in the art of drawing which he made in ink pen and lead pencil. (As he was colour blind, his work in colour was carefully planned in advance using numbered pencils for different colours). Coupled with great technical skills he also had a boundless imagination, quirky wit and a wide knowledge of art, music, theatre, social history, psychology and literature. Like all great illustrators, Percy’s drawings communicate on many levels—both intellectually as well as emotionally. They can be playful and profound at the same time. Although Percy lived for forty years in London, his works are often gloriously (and refreshingly) New Zealand centred. They give a unique perspective on the expatriate condition—they can be funny, touching, insightful, occasionally alarming, but always engaging. Graham Percy was born in Stratford, Taranaki in 1938, and before he left New Zealand for London in the mid-1960s, was a pivotal figure in the design and illustration of the New Zealand School Journal, and was familiar with many New Zealand artists of the time. Working in London, he illustrated over 100 books and became a hugely respected artist, illustrator and typographer. At the same time he produced a remarkable body of his own independent art before his untimely death in 2008, much of it referring back to his early life growing up in New Zealand.