New Zealand artist
Born in Auckland 1950
Lives and works in Wellington

Chilcott?s early paintings recalled childhood memories of growing up in rural New Zealand, as suggested by such titles as Our Old Horse Smokey and Holiday work in the Orchard. He included domestic details such as linoleum, curtain fabrics and furniture, and explored the fashionable decorative language of style, employing outlines and flat silhouettes of colour. These motifs lean heavily on a classical vocabulary but the columns, urns, scrolls and Tuscan trees are confined to the canvas.

Although primarily a painter, Chilcott has worked in other media such as ceramics, rugs, furniture, as well as lithography and sculpture, and has blurred the boundaries between fine and applied art.

In 1989, in collaboration with cabinetmaker David White, Gavin Chilcott created a complete dining room as an installation as the Auckland Art Gallery. Since then he has worked with other craftspeople, producing rugs and hand painted ceramics. In 1999 he produced ?Rites of spring? at the Hawkes Bay Exhibition Centre, in honour of the annual Hastings Blossom Festival. This installation incorporated Chilcott?s distinctive urns in his decoration of floats In the parade.

More recently Chilcott has explored images with Pacific references, using repeated elements reminiscent of Matisse paper cut-outs.