Trevor Moffitt: {Suite} Wellington

Trevor Moffitt (1936 – 2006) was one of New Zealand’s leading narrative painters. Moffitt was taught by Canterbury artists Bill Sutton and Russell Clark who, along with Rita Angus, searched for a particularly New Zealand style. Often confrontational in its honesty, his bold, direct expressionist style was considered almost primitive and this led to slow recognition of his talent. Simplicity was a feature of Moffit's art and he used his trademark technique of thickly applied impasto paint and solid tonally modelled forms to convey the messages in his paintings.

At the end of 1985 Moffitt started to research Stanley Graham, a New Zealand mass murderer who killed seven people in October 1941. Graham, a farmer and precision marksman, took out four policemen along with two Home Guarders and a civilian before being shot dead himself by a police marksman after a twelve day manhunt. Moffitt chose Graham as the subject for a series because he “felt an empathy for him. The narrative was important – how Graham was and how his life got out of control."