Taking a walk into the painting

At the entrance to Ross Lee’s Richmond home is a painting of a huge bull elephant; ears fanned out as it threatens to charge. It’s an impressive welcome to the home and tells the story of his life as a painter and also his memory of that elephant charging his vehicle in Africa on a journey long, long ago.

The 79-year-old award-winning artist continues to paint prolifically, with his paintings often sought out by New Zealand and international collectors. He refers to himself as a realist landscape painter and his focus is on light, the majestic feel of powerful skies and looming mountains.

He didn’t make a career out of painting until he was in his 30s and then it was selling his work on the streets to see how it would go. Until then he had been in the army, spent 14 years as a nurse and had even been a hairdresser in a women’s salon in Gisborne.

“That was the artist in me,” he says of hairdressing. “Just wanting to do something creative.”

The army was his first career, leaving school at 16 to join the regular force cadets which led to a stint at Buckingham Palace, joining the guards inside the palace grounds to guard Queen Elizabeth 11.

“I was in the army and that’s where they told me to go. We were taught how to do the march, and we were part of the Buckingham Palace guard inside the palace grounds. She was a young queen then and she used to go up and down the line shaking hands.”

His army career took him to Vietnam in 1966 for nine-months as a radio operator in the command post in the fight against the Viet Cong. That’s a period of his life he doesn’t want to dwell on.

By the 1970s, he had left the army and was travelling up through Africa, to Kenya with a group in two vehicles.

“We were the only people around in those days in the 70s and whole villages would come out to watch us. On the way, we went through the game reserves and that’s when the bull elephant put his ears out and tried to go for the vehicle.”

In comparison with his younger self, his Richmond studio is a tranquil setting with paintings that bring places like Milford Sound to life. That’s the whole point of his art; making people feel they can step into the painting because it feels so real.

Most of all, he says, it’s about peace, tranquillity and the beauty of nature that he has witnessed.