In the early eighties when we were visiting artists’ studios for material for the book Contemporary New Zealand Painters we had our son Pippin aged one in tow. Often we left him to his own devices and usually that worked out ok but in Alistair Nisbet-Smith’s (he was to have been in volume two) studio we came unstuck. He pretty much used the floor in front of his easel as a palette making it a mass of stalagmites of encrusted oil paint mixed with cigarette butts and piles of ash.
And that’s what Pippin crawled through.
Thought of that moment when we found this great feature on artists palettes through the ages. You can see more of them here.
Images: Left to right top to bottom. The palettes of Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Edgar Degas and Gustave Moreau
