Dean Buchanan was born in 1952. As a child growing up he was always busy, always drawing, vast jigsaw puzzles always on the go. By the time he attended school they were big paintings, two metres and more. Oils mostly, themes drawn from Dean’s own fast-developing intellectual life and the seas of New Zealand suburbia surrounding Castor Bay. He left home and moved into the heart of urban Auckland brimming with energy, passion and talent and dived enthusiastically into city life.
Dean was transfixed by line and colour, by the complex geometries of New Zealand landscape and bush. He wanted only to be an artist. He developed his own unique style and voice. He cycled and walked. He painted. He climbed mountains and looked down from the top. He and his wife built a house perched in the bush-clad hills high above Karekare beach on Auckland’s West Coast. Up well before dawn, painting in his studio down the bush path from his house, cycling, climbing, and always painting – Dean has found his unique voice, his unique vision of the world around him and now as ever he seeks only to paint it.
