Painting Life in the Southern Beech Forest

Forest and Bird, Issue 297, 1 August 2000, Page 12

Painting Life in the Southern Beech Forest

his issue’s centrefold painting of nature in a southern beech forest is the work of artist Ronald Cometti who wants to save the trees from loggers. ‘T was leading a tour group of Americans from the San Diego Museum of Natural History on the West Coast last year when the enormity of what New Zealand was doing to its beech forests struck me hard, says the artist. Te given the talk about our Gondwana beech forests often before — about how Japan still has 67 percent of its forests while we have only 23 percent. I was speaking of its values when suddenly I got choked up and couldn't go on. It seemed such a waste, so sad really and I resolved to do something about it personally: As a nature artist, Ronald Cometti decided that his best form of protest would be to paint the values to be found in the forest. He and his wife returned to

the South Island, from their home at Orewa on the Hibiscus Coast north of Auckland, and spent three weeks in the forests of Maruia and Lewis Pass, absorbing the atmosphere and studying the shape and life of the red and silver beech forests. This, coupled with photographs, preliminary sketches, ‘and photographs in my mind’ provided the framework for the painting. Further research involved finding individual specimens and talking with experts, including Forest and Bird’s field officer in Christchurch, Eugenie Sage. Altogether, the scene took three months to research and paint. ‘On the way I discovered more of what we were losing and tried to incorporate these things into the painting; says Ronald Cometti. "The need of so many forest birds for nesting holes in old trees is an example. ‘T also tried to show a representative understorey of shrubs.

Td read in Forest & Bird once that tui had the role of opening up mistletoe flowers so the plants could be pollinated, so that went in, he says. ‘Also ’'m told the beech forest is where five of our galaxids grow from "whitebait" into fish so they went into the stream along with koura (freshwater crayfish) and a long-finned eel, ‘Blue duck were once common in these areas though not seen for many years, so I included them; Ronald Cometti says. "The forests now are strangely silent having also lost so many birds to introduced pests. Other things to find in the

painting (pages 24-25) are the sky-blue mushroom Entoloma and the violet pouch fungus Thaxterogaster: also the peripatus, an ancient creature found in similar form as a marine fossil dated 500 million years ago in British Columbia. Altogether, there are 54 species in the painting: a test for anyone interested in identification. While Timberlands’ plans to log beech forests in Westland have since been stopped by the Government, clear felling of beech continues on Maoriowned land exempted from the ban on exporting native wood chips in Southland.