Art community celebrates ‘giant spirit in a tiny frame’
A Life Story
Margaret Dacre’s enormous paintings captured not only a remarkable likeness to their sitter, but invoked their character with telling, purposeful brush strokes.
Her bold and braves pieces were about much more than putting paint on canvas. They told a story, raised questions and offered answers. She attacked her works with ‘‘gritty expressionism and vigorous brushstrokes’’ and ‘‘did what so many valiantly strive to do today – to make the viewers think’’, art critic Pat Unger said.
‘‘My paintings spring from my experiences, which are of settled and unsettled domestic worlds, teaching, child rearing and the world of books, art, feminism, nature and the value system of Christ. I paint to validate my existence,’’ Dacre, a Christchurch resident and celebrated painter, said of her work.
‘‘Some paintings are like warning signs at the beach, paradox is in all works in many aspects.’’
Margaret, 78, died at home on September 17.
Born in Christchurch in 1938 to John Tyndall and Constance Morris, Margaret Tyndall was an active and overachieving youngster. Many of her weekends were spend in Oxford, where she accompanied her father on his shooting expeditions. She spent so much time there that ‘‘North Canterbury has claimed her as their own, at least for art purposes’’, her husband Hugh Dacre said.
She was a keen musician, athlete and competitive dancer, but ‘‘it was art which captured her heart’’.
‘‘Against their better judgement’’, her parent’s allowed her to study at the School of Fine Arts, where she emersed herself in plays and musicals. She was one of the first woman to graduate from the course with an honours degree and earned the esteemed Sawtell-Turner Prize for her painting achievements.
A decade later, she returned to education and went on to complete a diploma in teaching.
About this time, Margaret attended St Mary’s Church in Merivale and Christianity came to permeate her thinking and beliefs. Her teenage social life was largely centred on the church youth group and religion formed an instrumental part of her. Reverend Michael Hawke recalled Margaret as a ‘‘dream parishioner’’.
‘‘When she wrote notes they would always be on a flash card of the many famous artists.
‘‘My life has more colour because of people like [her].’’
Margaret worked as both a teacher and an adult art tutor, starting as a lecturer at the Christchurch Teacher’s Training College in 1975. She took on various teaching roles in art, art history and physical education at Taumarunui High School, Cottesmore College, St Margaret’s College, Christchurch Girls’ High School and as the head of the art department at both Cashmere High School and Christchurch Boys’ High School.
Alongside this, she was an active feminist and a member of the National Organisation of Woman.
Margaret gradually moved into parttime teaching work and finally into fulltime painting in 1997. She exhibited widely across New Zealand including a solo exhibition at Christchurch’s former Salamander Gallery and at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery, and won many awards and accolades.
Several ‘‘arresting’’ works led to her being asked to produce a series, titled Refugees, for the opening of the Christchurch Art Gallery in 2003. The series of large, multi-panelled paintings were said to speak to the relationship between the powerful and the powerless. Another series, titled Let the Paralysed Man Walk, is on display at the gallery until November 10.
Margaret’s children remembered their mother as a ‘‘a giant spirit in a tiny frame’’. An only child, she strived to foster a close family unit and her children – Rachel, Sarah, Alexandra and Adam – and seven close grandchildren became her driving force.
‘‘There are many who would expect to spend their teens with some sort of a soccer mum, but we had one who upon having served dinner, immediately donned a gas mask and headed up to her studio to paint into the night, tirelessly pursuing her great passion,’’ her children said in a joint statement.
‘‘It was perspiration, not inspiration, which allowed her to achieve her ambitions.’’