Book Review by Craft Arts International 2015

Maynard Waters A Working Painter

Maynard Waters is a Sydney boy who has been painting for almost 60 years. Both of these statements need to be qualified. He was born in Sydney (at the Crown Street Maternity Hospital) in 1936, and spent his formative years there. A major subject in his art is Sydney - its terrace houses, the harbour and the characters who live there. However, he hasn't lived in Sydney for very many years and as he stated in a recent interview, "I just paint the city today, as I knew it." I am reminded of Marc Chagall and his relationship to Vitebsk and when I asked him once why he didn't go back and live in the city that meant so much to him, he simply replied, "I don't think that I would recognise it, I paint the Vitebsk that I remember and that I've imagined." Much of the Sydney that Maynard paints is one which is revealed through memory and veiled in nostalgia.

Although he may have been painting for about six decades, with his first solo show at Canberra's long defunct Nundah Gallery in 1962, his artistic career has been erratic and, like his father before him, his regular day has often been working as a carpenter. He is definitely not a hobbyist or a Sunday afternoon painter, but a solo maverick who has created his own "naive" highly representational style with its engaging anecdotal manner. He loves to spin a yarn, in what we could term the convention of "conversation paintings", where viewers are invited to get together and have a giggle and a chinwag. It may be slightly pointless to try to characterise Maynard Waters style, as it is something resembling a cross between Russell Drysdale and Sam Byrne, without really being dependant on either artist. He loves storytelling, where there is usually a story within a story, and as you peer into a composition you will discover for yourself little details, like a dog precariously crossing the road, a cyclist propositioning a lady sunning her legs or a local drunk stealing the show. Although they are images which are consciously or yesteryear, the little-depicted dramas and comic situations are common to people of all times and have a distinct Australian accent. The paintings make no claims to uncovering profound truths, but are honest, down-to-earth works which, behind their comic facade reveal a committed and concerned person, one who believes you can present serious subjects and still carry a bit of humour in your back pocket.

For an artist to be painting for over half a century and to have had some 45 solo exhibitions to his credit, he must be a survivor and committed to his craft. Maynard Waters is both of these and much more. He is also an artist with a social conscience, proud of his working class origins, one who speaks for his people, in a visual language that his people will understand. He is a quiet lyricist, who in his paintings celebrates an Australia that has either passed by or perhaps has never really existed. Thanks to this delightful book of Maynard Waters paintings it now exists in our common imagination.

Emeritus Prof. Sasha Grishin AM,FAHA