Newspaper Article – Artist claims ministerial kinsman

Artist claims ministerial kinsman

Home town proves letdown

By GENEVIEVE FORDE

“I DON’T believe in arti-bloody-ficiality” said the artist, taking a gold filling out of his wallet and replacing it in his right front tooth before he posed for a photograph taken while he held a mahogany table lampstand he had carved,

The filling had come out the night before, said the artist, Sgorr Culbeag, alias Bob McLachlan, cousin of the Minister of Transport, Mr Colin McLachlan, on a nostalgic trip to the city of his birth and early life.

“Perhaps it might be easier if you just keep your mouth closed for the photograph,” suggested the photographer, as the artist was having some difficulty with the filling.

“I don’t go for that – posing, having a photograph taken holding a dry brush against a dry painting. I will talk to the reporter, explain about the carving, while you take the photo. I can’t do that with my mouth closed.

“I’ve got some poetry here, some philosophic etchings and paintings of a spiritual nature,” he said.

Mr Culbeag was born in Christchurch, the third of seven children, and grew up in Desmond Sreet, Merivale. He revisited the house this week. It was much the same.

He attended the Fendalton Open Air School, now called the Fendalton School, which also has not changed.

His father, Archibald Albany McLachlan, was the youngest stipendiary magistrate in New Zealand, and was on the Christchurch-West Coast circuit.

The family lived for a time on a farm between Hororata and Dunsandel.

Mr Culbeag went to Timaru Boys’ High School, where he drew during Latin, drew during French, drew during everything, till his father took the hint and allowed him to go to the School of Art in Christchurch though he had wanted his son to be a lawyer or a doctor.

“I didn’t go through that (the School of Art), being a radical,” Mr Culbeag said. “By the time I had done three decent drawings the rest of the class were still fiddling around with one unfinished drawing.

“I got sick of that and went to university extension night classes. They were really for the repatriation of soldiers who had been overseas, but I was included.”

Since then he has “pretty well covered the spectrum of life-styles”, living and working as an artist, sometimes having his own art business, once married with four children, and now divorced.

He has lived in Wellington, the West Coast, Auckland, Hawkes Bay (where he designed and built Fantasy Land [Fantasyland], the children’s playground), and for the last 10 years in Brighton, Dunedin.

As for art, he has tried every medium in that, too, although “portraiture is my forte.

He describes himself as an “experimentalist” and relates an incident of 15 years ago when he held a joint exhibition in Auckland with Peter McIntyre, who, he says said to him: “Bob, I envy you because you are an experimentalist and all I am is a ruddy factory.

He adopted the name Sgorr Culbeag about 20 years ago to avoid confusion because there was another artist working under the name of McLachlan in New Zealand.

Culbeag means rough and rugged and Sgorr means stony. “It fits my nature – Fiordland personified. I got it from an old Gaelic calendar.”

He would much prefer to be holed up in a hut in Fiordland in the snow to living in Christchurch as it now is – a “concrete jungle. Not that I’m a recluse, I’ve found my peace, in my art”.

The other night Mr Culbeag parked his van between North and South New Brighton, in a good position to see the sum come up the next morning. It was then that he discovered that he had spent the night right beside the sewage ponds. Still if he lived in Christchurch that would be as near to the city as he would like to be.

“If anything, my allegiance to Christchurch would be to the Christchurch I knew. I can’t get out quick enough. I’ve been in Barbadoes Street and round the Square three times looking for a park. By the time I hit Hornby I’ll be all right,

The Christchurch he remembers is the garden city.

“Beautiful stonemasonry in those days instead of glass and concrete. In the first half of the century, Christchurch was placid, very Anglicised, tranquil – even the clanging trams were more tranquil than the rush at the lights. Ten miles out would be close enough for me. One visit a week, the rest would be correspondence or delivery.

When he returns to Dunedin, Mr Culbeag will consider several teaching positions throughout New Zealand where he thinks he can best share some of the things he has learned.

“I’m very grateful for the talents I have and I wish to share them. I’m at a turning point in life, and now that I have explored all art forms, I wish to share these various accomplishments with others.”

A little of his poetry:

“Time, my friend, like money spend,
Wisely, fear not that others comprehend,
For they in selfishness will never know,
Thy innermost thoughts that nurtured grow.”

Photo caption – “SGORR CULBEAG alias Bob McLachlan