Throughout his career Don Driver has used found material as the subject for both oblique and disturbing narratives and for their surfaces, shapes, textures and colours.
Read MoreLiving in New Plymouth, in the North Island of New Zealand since childhood, Driver is a self-taught artist with his work both idiosyncratic and international in its influences. His practice has evolved from relief paintings in the early 1970s, (sharing much in common with artists, Don Peebles and Kenneth Noland), to 'arte povera', constructing narratives that seem distinctly familiar with materials that reference the lives of ordinary New Zealanders.
However, whether inspired by American abstraction or undermining household objects such as pipes, strips of rubber, prams, or leather and plastic in a single work, Driver constructs images that are disturbing, entertaining and highly memorable.
Driver’s work was included in the survey exhibition of New Zealand Art, Headlands in 1992. Examples of his work are held in the collections of the Auckland Art Gallery and Museum of New Zealand - Te Papa Tongarewa.
