Painting and the Purposes of God: Allie Eagle

One of the most significant Christian initiatives in Aotearoa, New Zealand for artists has been Chrysalis Seed, a mission that aimed to help artists integrate their art and faith, and to reconcile art and faith communities. Of the many ways in which Peter and Jessica Crothall and their team sought to encourage and empower artists, it was their magazine, CS Arts (formerly CS News), that had the widest impact. You can find the back catalogue of this remarkable magazine here, with interviews, commentary, reviews, and poetry, featuring the work and thought of many notable local artists.

One of those is the feminist Christian artist Allie Eagle (1949-2022), interviews with whom we are featuring here. A leader in the Woman’s Art Movement who became a follower of Jesus, Eagle is a fascinating and significant figure whose life defies easy categorisation (you can read more about her life in Jillian Wordsworth’s obituary). At the time of these interviews in 2004 she was an established artist. As we listen to her here, we get the sense of a woman entirely engaged in her vocation, alive to God, to this land, and to others. Now edited as one, these interviews were first published in the 2004 September and October issues of CS News. In both cases, the interviewer is Wendy Grace Allen. They’re reproduced here with the original introduction – Ed.

Allie Eagle has been a practising artist and arts educator since the 1970s. She is a familiar face at galleries, art schools and secondary schools around the country. Her lengthy curriculum vitae is testament to her life and her contribution to New Zealand art. This year a film titled Allie Eagle and Me has been part of film festivals around the country. The film reflects her participation in the Women’s Art Movement and 30 years later, the significant changes that are now reflected in her life and through her art. She is the Managing Artist for the exhibition Walking Past Each Other held at The Suter in Nelson from 14 September, 2004 and Artist in Residence at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology around the time of the exhibition.

How have you selected the artists included in this exhibition?

The selection process, both for the artists and writers, included getting people who speak to various concerns which I think are integral with the theme of the show. I wanted to ask at least one artist who has a love for primordial landscape—in fact there were two artists in this category for my first “hit list”: Don Binney and Derek March. Don’s not available due to the pressures from having just completed a mammoth effort of showing his work around the country. I am sorry he can’t be in the show. I wanted to ask at least one artist who has a love for the natural landscape, and its own healing processes. Derek March has an abiding interest in re-vegetation projects in the Waitakere river valley where over the last 27 years he has lived as my neighbour and friend in Te Henga/Bethells. I thought having a sincere advocate for the natural lands we inhabit and live near is always a good start when we begin to talk about land issues. The selection of the other artists has been on a basis of bringing different points of view to the central ideas of the exhibition.

There is Jonathan [Mane-Wheoki] whose understanding of things Victorian, architectural and Anglican is by no means skimpy. He has also got a good handle on the contemporary art world. Cushla Parekowhai and I have worked together on a number of projects and I am always very indebted for her perceptions in the way we regard one another’s stories and experiences of Aotearoa. Especially important for me has been the way she and brother Michael Parekowhai’s parents have inculcated in both of them a wonderful sense of community. They have a sensitivity and humour about our differences and a generosity of sharing their own Māori sensibility with this very elegant and at the same time inclusive kaupapa. The Parekowhais’ work engages the artist with real communities and helps to set up conversations that include the “little” people who are often seen as unimportant, and when this becomes art it’s very lovely.

What has motivated you to engage with the issues of land, ecology and identity that surround The Suter redevelopment?

I am a “coastal bush dweller” from Te Henga/Bethells Beach, and I also spent a part of my life at Otaki Beach with my mother. I came to The Suter with an idea that I wanted to have an exhibition here, that it would speak to the Nelson people and environment about things that matter here, that may have some parallels with the rural environments that I live in. When I found out the problems of The Suter needing housing for their collection and the Queens Gardens’ advocates wanting to see the Gardens conserved and not encroached on by The Suter, I thought that seemed a good starting point for an exhibition. I understand the needs The Suter has for extensions, and [that the opposing parties want] conservation of the Gardens. I could empathise with both positions very easily. It’s not too different from stuff that happens in other places around NZ. Certainly these conflicts have been part and parcel of my life at Te Henga where there are variations of concerns to do with the natural and man-made environments. Derek March and I have been involved in a very holistic way in the development of a park at Te Henga (there’s another conversation there), but at its heart it’s quite similar. And then there’s all the questions I ask myself when I come to a new environment like: What’s gone on here before? and Who are the guardians now? Is this place (Nelson) like the Waitakeres where there is a map full of place names that allude to Pākehā occupation, and another layer under it or over it like an overhead projector sheet that speaks of Māori names and memories that seldom get a look in? And then, who are the Iwi in Nelson? How do they see this place? Are there street people who live around these precincts? How do they live? Who was Bishop Suter and his colleagues, the artists, and the people who set up the gardens? What were they establishing? How did the old chiefs and people walk over this patch while the plans were being made? Then finally, looking down on this little patch in time, what was God’s heart yearning for in all this?

What outcomes would you most like to see come out of the exhibition?

A pattern has been emerging about my need to work with artists as we speak to and with families, and friends and communities with our art. [These are] growing conversations (my Māori colleagues lead the way here for me) and it’s a very exciting dialogue. An outcome is that I may be helping to model a very respectful, if not sometimes feisty and challenging way of doing art in the community, and speaking with a desire to hear back, include, reflect and get people to be involved.

How is your faith expressed through your art practice?

Oh, it’s really in-yer-face my faith, the way I do my art! I just have this number one mission statement—that’s to “paint the purposes of God into people’s hearts”. This is, I s’pose in concrete terms, doing stuff where I work with others in mentoring and networking. I’m thinking about areas where I have worked… like art teaching, working in the environment and building community through art making practices. [I’m] actually waiting to hear what God has in mind for the next step of what I’m going to do. After that, I think I am stepping out in faith, trusting him to meet all my needs.

Describe how your faith has changed the way that you make your art.

My faith in God works a little differently to natural faith in oneself. When I painted “Tough Call” recently (the red painting that’s in Briar March’s film of me, Allie Eagle and Me) I wanted to make an image in 2003 that was just as tough and grunty as my 70’s picture of a woman who’d died having a backstreet abortion…. So, I prayed and said something like this: What should I have that is an even more powerful image, Lord? And then a few moments later, as I waited for an answer, came the thought of a dead lamb hanging—like the sheep that is in the national coat of arms of NZ. So, I go on: Dear Lord, that’s a bit much isn’t it? I’m not big on bleeding Jesus’s on crosses. I want to think of the risen Christ. But I do know how important that sacrifice is in all of this. So I said: Ok then Lord, well if that’s really you, please confirm it today, ‘cos the painting needs to be done. That night when I get home the phone rings and it’s a friend who is about to drive out to see me from her farmlet. She says: I’ve just buried a couple of sheep. I’ll wash up and come on out! I say, springing to attention, don’t wash yet—dig one up and bring it to me!

How are you re-addressing earlier feminist concerns in your current art practice?

I am doing it by taking a hard look at what I made then and looking at the images and saying, What do I think about this now? What does the interim wisdom of my years tell me about the way that I formed ideas and art then, and do I have new stuff to say about all this now? So the work gets to be different of course, not just because my practice has developed hugely over the years but ‘cos the woman has thought about a lot of things differently over this time too. In some cases I needed to do that because I was ever being inundated by requests from art students studying the Feminist 70’s art practice. It occurred to me that while it’s not unflattering to have people want to learn about you, I would rather sit in a current seat of teaching than one I left a quarter of a century ago. So, I needed to do the mistress works that replaced, in a sense, the old ones, and thought it was a reasonably good idea to re-contextualise them. I read recently that Witi Ihimaera has needed to do a similar exercise with some of his earlier works because his polemics and thinking changed so much also. Ever the art teacher, these things I enjoy playing with comparisons and introducing new clues—I could bring in other elements that don’t allude to the big Feminist concerns of that time. There’s quite a series of works I have done in this recast manner—The Suter owns one of the first of these pieces [titled] “We Still Are, We Still Are”.

What role do you think that artists working from a Christian perspective will contribute to the dialogue of contemporary art practice in New Zealand?

Quite a big one… if they want it. They always have had a contribution… if you think of Baxter and McCahon for starters. I think now that Christians might be beginning to perceive themselves to be not the moral majority anymore, so it could mean that there is more of a mature decision to think long and hard about how they position themselves. There is a challenge always for the Christian to not be tyrannised by moulds that are incompatible. But also there’s a need to be savvy to speak in the language that they are most attracted to, and it is important for many art school trained people to speak with the aesthetic language of the day.

‘Dumbing down’ in art school

When I have taught at a number of tertiary institutions I have noticed how the Christian art students have been encouraged to dumb down their Christianity. I have seen some students experience an oppressive loss of creativity and/or a pressure to “say very little”. A student I knew was encouraged to be so minimal that she stopped painting altogether and then did photographs of corners of walls… the emptiness of art school…. She got A+ for those final works… very savvy…. While in some ways this is good… to use the minimalist and ambiguous formats that are the currency mostly in use, the student felt absolutely drained of any art making impulse for a long time after leaving art school. I think it is time to bring the mana back to the language that we love… and there is a rich life the heaven-bent Christian can contribute to the art world.

Isolated from their calling

I have seen some extraordinary things happen to the lives of artists who have been isolated from their calling through using the framework that is determined by a contextual base that is way outside of their own faith. So… getting to work with artists in Chrysalis, having exchanges with one another, stirring each other up to be “living creative stones jointly knit together” as makers of objects d’art that can withstand the heat of heavenly critique and encouragement… could just mean some pretty amazing art. I expect to do better and better myself as I apply these principles and I have a huge confidence that I am not the only artist in this land that is having a heartbeat tuned like this.