For November 2026, ZIMMERMAN is delighted to present Selective Memory - oil & cold wax paintings on panel by Waiheke-based artist Carol Bucknell. 

An artist's commentary and work details are beneath the images below

Artist's commentary

The emotional impact of old photographs first hit me as a teenager and they’ve continued to intrigue me ever since. 

Imagery from the past began to influence my work around four years ago when a friend asked me to paint a portrait of her parents from a beautiful 1940s black and white photograph.

Two years later I painted Home Made - a work inspired by memories of me and my two sisters wearing matching dresses in tea-rose fabric made by our mother.

I loved making these paintings, reimagining the mood of the subjects, the colours of their clothes, their relationships with each other.

When looking into the past we often do this, sometimes idealising situations and people, sometimes the opposite.

Whether it’s a conscious act or not, does editing our memories allow us construct a version of the past that feels more comfortable, or suits a particular narrative? This became a key question when I began researching the works for this exhibition. 

The works mainly reference my own recent past, growing up in a small semi-rural community during the fifties and sixties. Rather than convey detailed information my aim was to depict glimpses of memory from that time, like faded snapshots in an old photo album.

Featured works 

All paintings are oil & cold wax on panel, and are listed in the order of the images above.

Hawkes Bay Picnic
300 x 300 mm

Most Kiwi children who grew up in the 50s and 60s can remember having picnics in fields by the river or at the beach. In this work a child gazes steadily at the viewer, but does the pose of the female figure in the distance suggest this picnic was not as idyllic as it might seem? 

Calf Day
400 x 400 mm

One of my favourite events at primary school was calf (and lamb) day.  When my school mates won rosettes for the orphaned or abandoned lambs and calves that they’d raised from young babies, they achieved heroic status if only for a day.

Trolley Race
300 x 300 mm

Trolleys for me symbolise the glorious Kiwi tradition of creating useful objects from unwanted materials.  My Dad built several for us, my husband made at least one for our children and not long ago teamed up with his mates to build a beautiful trolley for a derby in our community (now consigned to history along with beach races). 

Beach Races
600 x 300 mm

Once a fixture on the calendars of many coastal communities, beach races have sadly fallen prey to the vicissitudes of health and safety bureaucracy.  This work pays homage to the intrepid jockeys and magnificent horses who competed in these epic races.

Muster
600 x 600 mm

An old photograph of a friend’s family sheep farm inspired this painting. Shearing, mustering and the benign gaze of these animals were as a familiar as pine trees and gumboots to rural children.

Land Girls
600 x 600 mm

An homage to the strength and resilience of the women who worked the land during WW2 while the men went to war. 

Quick March 
600 x 600 mm

My sister was a marching girl during the 1960s and I’ll never forget the immaculate uniforms, boots and hair; the straight posture, the perfect timing of their steps and confident stares. 

Consider the wildflowers
600 x 600 mm

As a child of the 1950s I grew up in a time when films were often impossibly romantic, featuring woman wearing beautiful dresses with tiny waists, wandering along beaches or through fields of wildflowers. Hollywood has a lot to answer for.

Golden Horse 
600 x 600 mm

A grainy image of my nine year old mother on a horse surrounded by her siblings was a poignant reminder of how life can be ‘golden’ one minute, tragic the next. Not long after this photo was taken the children’s mother died of pneumonia.