Robin White

(b Te Puke, NZ, 12 July 1946). New Zealand painter and printmaker. In 1967 she graduated in fine arts from the University of Auckland and trained as a teacher. The following year she moved to Paremata near Wellington, and in 1971 moved south to Dunedin to work full-time as an artist. The relationship between her painting and printmaking was always important to her development. In both she presented flat, simplified frontal images, as in Jerry at the Paekak Pub (1971; Lower Hutt, Dowse Mus.). The legacy of Rita Angus was central to her work, and she was frequently grouped with the New Zealand painter Don Binney (b 1940) and Michael Smither as an artist exploring realist concerns in a regional context. She was keen to make her images widely accessible through her silk-screen prints; in these she often simplified further the architectural and landscape forms of her environment. The birth of her son led to the inclusion of family imagery in works such as the screenprint Buzzy Bee for Siulolovao (1977). In 1982 she moved with her family to the republic of Kiribati, formerly the Gilbert Islands, to work with the Baha'i community. There she produced artists' books, prints and watercolours, largely concentrating on her immediate island environment.

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