Auckland-based Toby Raine is a striking artist. Literally. He uses his paints to search for his subject, layers up the colours and then slaps them back as if it is some BDSM game of peek-a-boo.
He says he works his pieces until they surprise him, and once, that surprise was mine because it was my face up there on the gallery wall, larger than life in thick gestural strokes. Fast and expressive. Flesh from the waist up. The body aimed away but for the tilt of a shoulder. She, that other me, glanced back—as if to weigh my worth. She consisted of valleys and peaks with those typical thick layers, her face swiped away with one daring, bold, but graceful gesture. There was shape without high definition except where it mattered—the daub of emerald for the eye, the smear of blue for an earring, and a purple flicker at the bottom, like a gas flame against a bare back.
It was the
