A small exhibition taken from the Steer collection.
Roy Steer was born and raised in Masterton, where he apprenticed as a cabinet maker and studied painting through night classes under T.A. McCormack.
As both a craftsman and artist, he has a special place in the history of the region, with many of his landscape paintings of the Wairarapa distinctive and consistent and of the time.
Roy was a familiar face in Masterton, he would often walk around with his drawing board making sketches. He would work in a variety of media; watercolour, pen and ink, oils and pastels. Siblings Roy and Elsie were both deaf, and Roy was often quite reclusive.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Wairarapa Arts Centre- now Aratoi- took delivery of hundreds of Roy Steer’s artwork, representing a lifetime of creativity.
Elsie Steer, Roy’s sister, worked in a Masterton photographic studio before moving permanently to Sydney. She also painted and came to visit Masterton when Aratoi was being built.
Elsie had some success in Sydney with paintings accepted for the Archibald Prize, Australia’s foremost portrait competition, and she was an accomplished writer and poet.
She donated three portraits along with some of Roy’s drawings and notebooks from his time studying art at evening classes in Masterton.