The Artist

Taranaki-based Driver trained as a dental technician and then worked for a paint and wallpaper merchant in New Plymouth, and is self-taught as an artist. His six-month bus trip across the United States provided first-hand experience of the colour field paintings of American abstraction, and the assemblages of Pop artists which motivated him to “not to copy, but to make an equivalent from materials around me”. Often described as a regional artist, Driver transforms everyday materials to leap beyond their mundane origins into the realm of art. As a child he always wanted to be a magician – “the inexplicable and magical have always appealed to me”, he explains – and his works often use unexpected juxtapositions. As the manager of a fertiliser works who provided materials to Driver remarked: “It is a great achievement for a fertiliser bag to become a work of art – and a surprising one.”

Articles related to DRIVER, Don, 1930-2011, available from INZART: Index to New Zealand Art

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