Fijian
p. 50 · Read in the full issue
Dr. Verrier Wants A Fijian School of Painting
From Our Own Correspondent SUVA, April 20.
WHY should not the Fijian instinct for colour and design inspire a characteristically Fijian School of painting and other arts which would take the place of the picture-postcard products of occasional visiting artists.
This question was raised in Auckland recently by Dr. Lindsay Verrier, of the Medical Department, Fiji, who has been looking into the art of oil painting in Australia, although he says he cannot The answer to Dr. Verrier is that there is no reason why not except that, for three-quarters of a century, mass-pro duced commercialism and a ludicrous policy of artificial Westernisation have been doing their best to stamp out every vestige of native artistic genius, together with virtually all the more important native arts and crafts.
Anyway, Dr. Verrier hopes to do some thing about it. If he can start a move ment to bring the almost, but not quite, extinct spirit of Fijian art out of the museums and back into everyday life, he will have achieved something monumen tstl in the meantime, Dr. verrier has been appointed to a “travelling doctor’s’ post in Vanua Levu—for years one of Fijis most medically neglected areas. There are districts in the provinces of Macuata and Bua where no Fijian village has sighted a medical officer for a long time because of the Government’s inability to secure sufficient medical officers.