In this episode, I sit down with Richard Lewer at Suite Gallery in Tāmaki Makaurau.

This episode is part of a series I’m delivering this season for the McCahon House Parehuia Residency, celebrating their 20th Anniversary, where I’m volunteering the services of The Good Oil to highlight the wonderful and important work they do, and some of their very impressive alumni, which includes Richard.

Richard has a BFA from the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland and and Master of Visual Arts from Victoria College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne.

His work is held in numerous public and private collections, including Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongawera, the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He is also the recipient of several art prizes and residencies, including the 2026 Archibald Portrait Prize, and of course is Alumni of the McCahon House Parehuia residency.

Richard is represented in Suite Gallery in Tāmaki Makaurau, Jan Murphy Gallery in Brisbane and Hugo Michell in Sydney.

There are images of the works that we talk about on The Good Oil Richard Lewer Instagram Post for your reference.

In the episode, you’ll hear Richard talk about how Colin McCahon text paintings spoke to him as a teenager, that he views his job as a painter is to document raw but beautiful, personal tender moments of human experience, how he’d love to be a funeral painter, the various substrates that he works with and how they excite him because of the different narrative they add to works, and why he describes painting as a bit like digging a hole.