Shimmering artwork full of meaning

Andy Malcolm lives in a house full of paintings, photographs and sculptures, but one artwork really stands out for him. It’s a painting of clouds that he connects with on a very personal level. He talks to Matt Lawrey about the painting and why it means so much.

Get too close to Andy Malcolm’s favourite artwork and you may well end up wearing some of it.

The urologist’s number one piece of creativity in his Nelson home is a painting of clouds titled Somewhere a Man is Repairing the Night One Word at a Time by Reuben Paterson, created with oil paint and lots of glitter.

Andy says the now New York-based Māori artist became interested in glitter while studying at Elam School of Fine Arts.

“I think a lot of it came from the romantic view of light, showing purity and saintly light. He got interested in how glitter reflects light and magnifies it,” Andy says.

The contemporary painting came into Andy’s life five years ago, a couple of days after the death of his mother, Mariel.

He was walking down a street in Wellington when he came across a gallery hosting an exhibition of Paterson’s work.

“I looked at the painting and I thought, ‘My mother was really into clouds,’ and so, for me, it’s kind of a celestial representation of her dying and going into light.”

Andy says he had “coveted” Paterson’s work for a long time.

“It was wickedly expensive, but I just thought, ‘Actually, I want that to remember her by,’ and so for me it has an enormous amount of meaning.”

Andy says his mother had more classical taste in art and would probably have wondered what he saw in the painting. For him, though, it’s a winner.

“I just like the ethereal nature of clouds and how they come and they go. The joy of it is the way that during the day it changes enormously with the glitter. It’s almost at its best in the night, where light will shine out of it and it just shimmers in front of your eyes.”

Experience has taught Andy that it’s also a painting that can literally leave its mark on you.

“Every time you move it, you lose a bit of glitter and can end up with glitter on you.

When you interact with it, you become part of it,” he laughs.

Andy is a prolific collector of art.

“I’ve always been fascinated by art. I was like the little nerdy Leonardo de Vinci book-reading person at 10, and then in my teens became an Impressionist fanatic with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Cézanne.”

The art around Andy’s Nelson home includes works by, amongst others, Otis Frizzell, JS Parker, Matthew Leniston, Tim Wraight, Rosa Coutts and Maico Camilo. There’s also a Colin McCahon print, a striking close-up photo of one of Andy’s eyes, and 50 painted love hearts in a frame by his daughter, which she gave to him for his 50th birthday.

Andy grew up in Wellington and did a degree in Biochemistry and Physiology at Victoria University.

He then studied Medicine at the University of Otago, followed by more study at Christchurch Clinical School of Medicine, and a couple of years working as a house surgeon.

He and his former wife, Sarah, then travelled for two years through South and Central America and then Asia. This was followed by more training and a year in London before they came to Nelson in 1999, when Andy started a job at Nelson Hospital.

“We came here not ever having lived here, either of us, and we didn’t have much connection to the place. We just found it was a community that we really enjoyed.”

That enjoyment has continued to this day.

“I think the really interesting thing about this community is that you can’t be a spectator. You have to be involved and enmeshed in it to get the most out of it. I don’t think you can just sit on the periphery and just watch the world, it’s just too small.”

Outside of his work and family, the father of three has also thrown himself into life in Nelson through his love of rugby. Andy spent 15 years as a referee, which included games at the senior level, and he spent much of that time as the Tasman Mako match-day doctor.

“I’ve just retired from that to give the young people a chance. New leaves can’t come until the old fall,” he says.