My Favourite Artwork | Painting a life changing gift from grandmother

Architect Jeremy Smith’s favourite artwork has had a significant impact on his life and career. A gift from his grandmother, the watercolour was painted by the artist and writer Eric Lee-Johnson in 1945. The present led to Jeremy reading a book by Lee-Johnson, which led to him looking at both land and buildings in a new way. He told the story to Matt Lawrey.

Jeremy Smith was great mates with his grandmother. “Her name was Millo and she was a very good friend. I used to holiday with her when she was in her nineties and, when she died, she gifted me this painting.”

Jeremy’s love of the moody painting of the North Island’s Mahurangi Harbour led him to read a book by the artist behind it, Eric Lee-Johnson. “He was one of the early New Zealand landscape painters who started painting what he saw rather than what he was told to paint, the version of ‘Little Britain’ that was being posted back home,” Jeremy says. “He described the New Zealand landscape as ‘unfinished’ and always ready to revert to a wild condition.”

The idea of the unfinished landscape led Jeremy to think about the place of buildings in that landscape and how they too should be adaptable, particularly in light of climate change. “The painting and that quote about the landscape being unfinished set me off on this realisation that we’re taught to finish buildings as if we can control the landscape, but we can’t control the landscape,” he says.

This thought process became the inspiration for a Pecha Kucha talk that he gave in 2007 and the basis of his PhD doctorate. Jeremy spent six years doing his doctorate before completing it in 2019. Since then, he has been invited to talk on the topic and teach around the world, working in countries as varied as Spain, Singapore, Germany, the USA, Holland, India, Portugal, and France.

This year, he’s off to South Africa where he’s giving a Master Class at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, where he has been made an Adjunct Professor, to a “huge collection” of architects.

In addition to lecturing offshore, Jeremy has represented New Zealand three times at the Prague International Architecture Festival. He has also been appointed to architecture award juries at an international level, including being an International Juror for the Indian Institute of Architects National Awards for Architectural Excellence in 2019. He has been a judge at World Architecture Festivals in Singapore, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Lisbon, as well as at the World Architecture Festival China. He’s also been a judge for the A’Design International Design Award out of Italy, the Muse Design Awards out of New York, and the Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects New Zealand Architecture Awards.

If that wasn’t enough, he has also been appointed an International Advisor to the Saveetha College of Architecture and Design in Chennai, India, and last year was the John G Williams Distinguished Visiting Practitioner at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design in the States. He won Victoria University of Wellington’s Centennial Medal for post-graduate academic achievement and has been an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Auckland.

Born in Wellington, Jeremy’s family moved to Nelson when he was six. He went to Hampden Street School, Nelson Prep, and Nelson College before studying at Otago where he did Architecture Intermediate and completed a degree in geology. His student days then took him to Victoria University of Wellington where he did his degree in architecture. Jeremy moved back to Nelson 20 years ago with his wife Genevieve and two of their three girls.

These days, in addition to being an in-demand academic, he’s a partner in the award-winning Irving Smith Architects whose designs in Nelson include the redevelopment of Nelson School of Music, NMIT’s Arts and Media building, the northern extension of the Trafalgar Centre, and the firm’s building in Collingwood St. “We are interested in the idea that buildings don’t have to be complicated or expensive; they’re about people,” Jeremy says.

So, after all these years and all his academic and professional achievements, how does Jeremy feel today when he looks at the painting hanging on the wall of his home’s master bedroom? “It makes me think of my grandmother, which I think is wonderful, and it reminds me of this adventure we’re on,” he says with a smile.