I Remember When /
North Canterbury artist and picture framer Colin Bryce’s workshop is full of hidden treasures.
Explore a world of hidden treasures with picture framer Colin Bryce
PORTRAITS WITH CHARACTER AND SOUL, LOCAL landscapes, and quirky sculptures – including what can only be described as sexy witches – fill Colin Bryce’s spacious Leithfield, North Canterbury workshop to overflowing.
For three decades, Colin has built a quiet reputation as a master picture framer, and artists from far and wide seek out his services. Colin is also an artist and delights in immersing himself in his unique creative world.
Colin met his wife Jenny, an accomplished embroidery and stump-work artist, at a party in Kaiapoi; they were married in 1960 and have loved living in the area ever since.
Colin has spent most of his life in Canterbury but was born in Invercargill, living in Dipton and Mataura, in Southland, before going to primary school in Ashburton where his father worked for the RNZAF at the airport during the war.
‘There were seven of us in the family – three sisters and four brothers,’ Colin recounts. ‘I was number three on the list. My father drank a bit, so at 18, I took off. I finished up in Auckland, where my elder brother was in the Navy. My first job was in a shoe factory. I quite enjoyed that. I like making things.’
It must have been hard, growing up in a time of war and rationing, never quite knowing how the future would turn out. Perhaps that helped spur Colin’s passion for art as a way to escape into a world of imagination.
After that, he went contracting, felling trees in Balmoral. But he got fed up with the owner bullying him. Always one to speak his mind, Colin faced up to him and a pile of logs and told him, ‘Would you mind facing south and flipping the whole lot up your north end!’ Later: ‘You’re not going to put that in, are you?’
Next came a time working with the railways, but that didn’t suit. Colin then got a job at the freezing works, in
Belfast and Kaiapoi. A friend convinced him he would be ideal as a meat inspector, so he joined the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, trained up, and spent 30 years in the role.
Meanwhile, Jenny owned a dairy in Christchurch – well known with locals as the Blue and White dairy on Bealey Avenue. The shop would shake a bit whenever heavy vehicles drove by. Then came the May 1968 earthquake, which was felt widely around the South Island and lower North Island. ‘Our daughter came charging out and said that was the biggest tram that ever went past,’ says Colin.
Colin and Jenny retired to their present home in the quiet village of Leithfield in 1990. ‘This garden was a paddock. There was nothing out here,’ says Jenny.
She has since created a colourful garden. In September, spring blossom was standing up valiantly to a fierce nor’wester. There have been a few changes, a few new buildings, but Colin loves the rural atmosphere, the school children waving on their way past the house, the dark red colours of the barn against a pure blue Canterbury sky. ‘I’m reading about Auckland and places that are closed down – you can’t do this, can’t do that, and I’m thinking we are in the right area.’
One place that remains the same is the former big packing shed for the glasshouses, which measures 1,600 square metres. That’s a decent-sized garden shed, but Colin also has another one for his framing, and Jenny has her own space too. ‘When you retired you weren’t going to sit around doing nothing,’ she observes.
‘Oh no, I’ve got so many hobbies there was very little time for framing,’ Colin confesses. ‘I’ve always painted and drawn and sketched and that kind of thing. I definitely like woodcarving. I’ll see a block of wood; I’ll see something in it and I will just cut into it.’
He also does clay work. ‘I’ve still got a wheel and a kiln out there. I can’t throw anything away either so all the scraps of framing I am inclined to turn into trinket boxes.’
One special occasion was a gnome convention in town. Jenny recalls one of Colin’s friends asking him to make a gnome. ‘I had a request to make a gnome of the English prime minister, so I did and I put a Union Jack in his hand,’ says Colin. That was shortly after they moved in, which dates the gnomish PM in question as Sir John Major. ‘He lost the next election and they said it was me who did that, and they were thanking me.’
Creating art makes an enormous difference in life, Colin believes. ‘I think it’s a release in yourself – you are not anchored, screwed down, nailed to a table or something, you go in the direction you like. I like painting people, I like doing portrait work, but also like to lose the plot occasionally and just let something happen.’
Colin also has an appreciation for others’ art which has fuelled the framing side of his operation. ‘I know a lot of artists and they bring their art in to be framed. I like seeing it, that’s why I keep on framing.’
Jenny adds that he likes to hide away in his workshop. ‘There is so much going on in the world, so many disasters, you can go and hide yourself.’
‘That’s right,’ replies Colin. ‘When I pull that door, that’s it.’ October (2020) was a big month for Colin and wife Jenny, celebrating Colin’s 90th birthday and also their 60th wedding anniversary, together with their combined four children – Tony, Sheryll (who owns the wine shop and gallery at nearby Pukeko Junction), Gregory and Michael; four grandchildren; and one great-grandchild, with another on the way.
‘I like painting people, I like doing portrait work, but also like to lose the plot occasionally and just let something happen.’