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Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa, ko Sophie Thorne, tōku ingoa. Um, I'm so pleased to be welcoming you all here to Milk and Honey. Today, at this book launch, um, I look after the Victoria University Art Collection as the curator collections at the Adam Art Gallery. Um, and I have had years of communication with Anna, and I've never met her in person until today, so it's so exciting. [00:00:30] So exciting to be here, and to be surrounded by these five works from the Ngā Puhi Puhi o Te Herenga Waka art collection. I'd like to pass over to Sonia Cahill. Hello and welcome. My name is Sonia Cahill. I am Anna's daughter and Douglas great niece. So, welcome today. We've got a couple of people in the audience that I'd like to acknowledge. Firstly, Eric Soulier, Councillor [00:01:00] of the Cultural and Scientific Embassy of France in New Zealand. Adrian Macy and Sarah Dennis, former New Zealand Ambassadors to France. Margaret Nielsen, pianist, former music lecturer at Victoria University and champion of Douglas Lilburn's music, Professor Peter Walls, conductor, musicologist, arts and music consultant, Gareth Watkins and Roger Smith of Pride New Zealand, who are audio recording [00:01:30] this event for their website and archives, Chris CK, the chief librarian of the Alexander Turnbull Library, the National Library of New Zealand. And to absent friends and family here in spirit, including Douglas's beloved life partner, Patrick, in Paris, and French art historian, Dr. Nellie Fanet. To the three generations of my family here today, my mother, Anna Cahill, my sister, Rebecca, my daughters, Asha and Elise, my mother's [00:02:00] cousin, Stuart McDiamond, and his wife, Helen. So welcome, friends, old and new. Together with Rebecca and my mother Anna, we created the MacDiamond Arts Trust in 2016, a registered charity wholly responsible for managing Douglas creative interests to protect and preserve the integrity of his work. This afternoon has a dual purpose. Today, the 14th of [00:02:30] November, marks 100 years since Douglas birth in Taihape in 1922. It's also essentially the last hurrah to the much loved elder of our MacDiamond family, whom we were unable to farewell when he passed away in Paris on the 26th of August in 2020, aged 97. So today is the centenary tribute. And there are few people in this world who knew Douglas as well as fellow New Zealand [00:03:00] painter and dear friend, Pira McArthur. Unfortunately, Pyrrha is unable to be with us today, but she has recorded a splendid message thanks to Gareth and Roger. So please enjoy Pyrrha's tribute to Douglas. This is Pyrrha MacArthur, and, uh, I was privileged indeed to share a good journey with Douglas. He will always be with us in endless ways, and come what [00:03:30] may, we can laugh with him at ridiculous foibles and feel his immense compassion for floundering humanity. I got to know Douglass really well in our last diplomatic postings in Paris in the 70s and 1980s, where we worked together as painters and were involved in endless discussion. Those discussions continued by correspondence until his death. What was he really like? He had a [00:04:00] relentless self control. And he painted the way he felt he must paint when dealing with materials and craftsmanship. He was a perfectionist. He had a wide ranging soul. Dignity, intelligence, and curiosity. He stuck to his guns when it came to things he felt passionate about. He was terrific fun. And deeply sincere. He loved to say, I laugh with you, not at you. In person and in [00:04:30] mind, he was elegant, spare, dapper. I have seen him work in a tiny space, impeccably, in his Montmartre apartment. I think of him as a marvelous educator. He did indeed eke out a living by teaching when times were tough. He looked to discover the hidden potentials rather than impose his own ideas. And he taught us the importance of [00:05:00] rigor in all we do. When I brought up my tendency to paint large with reference to a work of mine called Red Gladioli for the Concert Pianist, he came back with this extraordinary answer. Dearest Piera, I probably belong in one of your paintings. Just imagine, having taken the nose off the grindest of stones up to the [00:05:30] surface in need of reward, finally I got around to opening your 11th of July email, and I have been sitting transfixed, shaking like an old bone jelly in delight at your lady Pianist giving hell to a list. Rhapsody. The crash of the chandelier is imminent, but what needs she care? The very gladioli are blazing like Blake's tiger in the night, and I love it. [00:06:00] Those insane white... High heeled Joan Crawford shoes, which clearly she's not quite yet used to, are a triumph and have turned me into a fetishist, surely. For pity's sake, don't go small until you're forced to. There's nothing wrong with you, or the fact that you can paint everyone into a hocked cat. From the young New Zealand painter teaching at the Lycée Henri IV in Paris, [00:06:30] to this immensely gifted individual acting like a leaven in our thought processes, what a huge and admirable step with lasting impact on us all. Voilà. C'est fini. So a special thank you to Gareth and Roger for capturing that recording of Pira, um, over the weekend. That's beautiful. So today, this centenary occasion [00:07:00] is both a collaborative art trail through New Zealand and the launch of a new book as a companion to Douglas 2018 biography, Colours of a Life. And we are launching Letters to Lil Burn, Douglas McDiarmid's conversations from the heart today. Letters to Lilburn honours one of Douglas passions, his love of words and language, and his huge correspondence with many people, both in New Zealand and overseas. [00:07:30] We also have with us today a recording of a wonderful woman who knew both Douglas Lilburn and Douglas MacDiamond well as friend to both and Victoria University music students, music school colleague of Lilburn, as well as the preferred interpreter of his piano compositions. I'd like to welcome Margaret Nielsen here today and we're going to listen to a recording as well. Please enjoy. Douglas Lilburn was a colleague [00:08:00] of mine for many years at the university in what in those days was the music department, as you may recall. And, um, he was almost like a shadow in the doorway because he was so backward at coming forward. He never came and said, I'm Douglas Lilburn, not Douglas. And in those days there wasn't much New Zealand music being performed. There was a kind of... Just, it wasn't [00:08:30] considered to be very important or very interesting. So, the only thing I could think of doing was to play some of it myself. How about Douglas MacDiamond? How did you first meet him? Well, it was through my late husband and Farquhar as well, David and Radia. Um, and they had quite a big art collection, a painting collection, including... A number of big diamonds, mainly watercolours. How about the two Douglasses? How did they get on [00:09:00] together? Oh, well, it depended what the weather was like a little bit, yes. They, they, I think they had had a period of very close together, and they probably had a relationship or two, and for a while anyway, but I'm not sure for how long. But then they often got very shirty with each other. But, uh, anyway, it was, it was an interesting time, and I learned a lot from them, as well. And, [00:09:30] and, and I did get a lot of laughs. And they could laugh at themselves, too. Uh, Douglas Lilburn probably less likely to, whereas MacDiamond, um, he just shook his head and kind of, you know, had a good, good guffaw or two. And, uh, he, I liked him very much. He had warmth and, um, wit, and I just feel delighted I was around [00:10:00] to have an experience of learning these things about them. Thank you, Margaret, for sharing your experiences with us. That's beautiful. So shortly we will raise a toast to Douglas. So if you need to top your glasses up, please feel free to grab another drink from the bar. Um, and while we do that, I'd like to invite Professor Peter Walls to say a few words about Douglas Lilburn and this compilation of MacDiamond letters and poems. Please welcome [00:10:30] Professor Walls. Kia ora tatou. I'm not really quite sure what my qualifications are to speak here at this book launch. I'm really here as Margaret Nielsen's chauffeur. And of course, Margaret gets honourable mention in the volume, as indeed she should. In June 1990, Douglas Lilburn sent Douglas McDiarmid a [00:11:00] cassette of his piano music. I'm going to just refer to them as Lilburn and McDiarmid from now on because it's... Just, it's not coldness, it's just, to avoid confusion. Anyway, so, uh, Lilburn sent McDiarmid a cassette of piano music, and McDiarmid's response was, You couldn't have done anything to bring greater pleasure. Further, I'd forgotten what a pianist Margaret N. is. She's [00:11:30] into their utter simplicity. their longing, their vigor, their spiritual size, as well as allowing through something different from what I carried away from your own hands on which eternal blessing be. So, um, I too, Uh, share that enthusiasm for Margaret's playing, say that, as a colleague of mine at the School of Music, she was, uh, so influential and, and such an, uh, an important person in my own life, you know, as a, [00:12:00] uh, first of all, a musical inspiration, but then as a fighter for what the school needed, and also as a, as a kind of link to Douglas. I'd been there as a student when Douglas was on the, uh, staff, and when I came back to join the staff in 1978, um, Douglas was a colleague for a time, uh, and then eventually he put me onto the Music Advisory Committee of the Lilburn Trust, which Margaret was already a member [00:12:30] of. Um, and, uh, I'd like to acknowledge, too, that we've got Chris Sekay, who's the chair of the Music Advisory Committee, and also Roger Smith, who's one of my colleagues on that. So, uh, Margaret would also from time to time once we were, once Douglas retired, you know, she'd say to me, typically on a Friday afternoon, come on, we better go and see Douglas. And we'd go up to 22 Ascot Street and spend a couple of hours with him drinking wine and [00:13:00] talking. And, um, I got to know Douglas through that, um, Quite a lot better, I guess. I was actually very eager to read Letters to Lilburn, having greatly enjoyed Anna's biography of Douglas MacDiabard, The Colors of a Life. In fact, what happened here was that the composer Ross Harris, um, urged it on me, and he said, you know, he said, there's quite a lot about our Douglas here that he, Ross, hadn't really known. And of course, when I [00:13:30] read the biography, Um, that was also true for me. It was just so interesting, but also, um, just to open up for me what a huge range there was in Douglas MacDiarmid's paintings, which I mostly knew through the, um, I most, is that working? Yep. So I mostly knew it through the paintings in Douglas's own house, of course. Um, Lilburn acted as a kind of agent for McDiarmid, and a generous [00:14:00] agent too, because again and again in the letters we find McDiarmid urging Lilburn to take one out of a batch of paintings that was up for sale, um, to take a painting in lieu of commission, and Douglas never, Lilburn, never seems to have acted on that because Next letter would be the same thing, please take one of these. At one point, McDiarmid asked, this is before he'd seen the house I think, but he asked whether the garden shed at 22 [00:14:30] Ascot Street would be a suitable place to store some oil paintings. Those of us who know that shed know it's a much more appropriate place to store 20 year old bottles of beer and firewood. Um, So, it's been obvious to anyone involved with the Lilburn Trust that Lilburn had a shrewd sense of investment priorities worthy of his Scottish heritage. So in 1971, we see him advising McDiarmid on his own, you know, [00:15:00] financial affairs back in New Zealand. Um, and there's a wonderful letter from McDiarmid thanking Lilburn for, for helping him with this. And he says, What an amazing monument of organization you turn out to be. But I mean amazing. A very full letter of details of these various money investments, followed by a chaser, which surely covers every possible eventuality, except one, a Spanish proverb, I'm not sure whether I should continue with this, but a Spanish proverb [00:15:30] actually quoted by Cervantes. Green figs and servant girls mature through pinching. With all these maturity dates, you quote, my daft brain went straight on to that. Very many thanks for looking after this business a thousand percent better than I ever could. My maturity date, in fact, is a moot point. So, actually, that sense of humor comes through as, actually, we've already heard from Piera McArthur in, in the letters. [00:16:00] Um, lovers of McDiarmid's paintings and Lilburn's music will appreciate greatly, I think, some of the more poetic passages, and indeed, Poems, in the letters, where MacDiarmid comments on landscape in a way that makes so much sense of Lilburn's own mode of expression. To take just one of many examples from 1949, a year when, uh, MacDiarmid returned to New Zealand. He writes, Lovely to hear your [00:16:30] sonata again last week, or whenever it was. Something so movingly indigenous comes from it, that while I hold it intact in my head, I even know how to paint. And lose for that time too, the insufferable thirsts. Find rather to my surprise, a tangible emotion, at the sight of those gashed arongarongas and hot clear light over the harbour from here. Finding this strong emotional response to landscape reflected in music is absolutely [00:17:00] in line with what, the way Lilburn felt. I remember as a student, Bruce Greenfield and I learning what we thought of as his violin sonata, and when we felt it was ready, we asked Lilburn to come and listen. And his first comment, I remember, you know, when we played it, and the first thing he said, pointing to the opening page of the sonata was, you've seen the mountains in the South Island. And he took it from there. I have to say, [00:17:30] I'd say, what we know of as the, the uh, Lilburn Sonata, Margaret was very keen that We get out the two earlier sonatas, which Douglas had almost suppressed, so she and I learned one of those. And again, when the time came, actually, for him to audition his own piece, like, would we be allowed to play it, he came up to Margaret's house in Karori and we played it for him. And on that occasion, I don't remember him talking about the mountains so much, Margaret, [00:18:00] but he said, we've got to cut the last page, it goes on a bit long, so he made it. An edit with a red pencil right there. Anyway, um, but that, that kind of sense of connection between this very strong emotional connection between the landscape and what Lilburn was doing and what McDiarmid is doing is something that comes through very, very strongly. And as a commentary on art and music. Letters to Lilburn is absolutely fascinating. But mostly, [00:18:30] um, it is absorbing as a love story. One that lasted from the two Douglas first encounter in 1944, through to the composer's death. In fact, there's a letter written exactly 12 months before Lilburn died, after he'd heard the pianist Mary Gow playing at the New Zealand Embassy in Paris. And that one reads, When, as for us, confirmation of life and love comes finally from pretty well every side, expression of grateful wonder can be [00:19:00] exchanged most happily. After all these years, to be given these lilburn sounds that never leave me, like water splashing down rock pools on the first morning. Beautiful letter. Letters to Lilburn is like an epistolary novel in which we have to infer the other side of the conversation all the time. McDiarmid writes beautifully, There are moments of total exhilaration in their relationship, but on the whole these are [00:19:30] outnumbered by passages of melancholy and yearning. Lilburn clearly found it hard to commit to this relationship, and this This also seems to have been the case in his relationship, um, with Rita Angus, and in fact others. It's just something about Lilburn's own character and personality, I suppose. So having MacDiarmid in France on the other side of the world, in a way seemed to allow Lilburn to become more uncomplicatedly loving. [00:20:00] And there are some beautiful letters we're on when they're... On the opposite side of the world. But McDiarmid's proximity on visits home always seem to complicate things. Sometimes the frustration for McDiarmid boils over. In June 1945 he exclaims, What in God's name do you think I am? Something with an electric switch. And then there's a letter later in the same year with an embedded poem. And part of the [00:20:30] poem goes like this. Oh living so, I feared to lose in death or life your total you, not knowing that I could not choose to have or hold, to love or cherish anything but what was left when you had shaken free. Um, so look, I'm just going to encourage you all to explore these letters for yourselves. Thank you Anna for this beautiful book, uh, and congratulations. [00:21:00] Okay, now it gives me great pleasure to introduce my mother, Anna Cahill, who is Douglas's biographer and also the, the compiler of Letters to Lilburn to talk about this new compilation and how it came to be. Please welcome Anna. [00:21:30] Thank you very much for coming along tonight. Um, to this afternoon. Um, in some respects I feel that there's little more to say in that, um, Douglass words and Douglass paintings do speak for themselves. Um, however, I'll give you a little bit of background. Um, when I was writing and researching Douglass's biography, I came to realize that... My job as biographer was not [00:22:00] over. Um, when I agreed to write the book, um, Douglas had always wanted his story told. Um, it was a somewhat reckless decision and it was a big hurry to try and, try and get this book properly researched, properly written, properly published before he died. He was 93 when we made that choice. So, um, it had to be done in somewhat of a hurry. Um, In the course of, of, of [00:22:30] researching the book, after I'd spoken to Douglas at length in Paris, I came to understand that there were a lot of gaps in his story. Douglas doesn't do dates, he didn't do numbers, he didn't care at all about money, um, he, uh, or chronologies. So, The letters that he left in the, um, in the Alexander Turnbull Library, that wonderful archive there, was actually my salvation in piecing together Douglas story, and I'm [00:23:00] enormously grateful to the Alexander Turnbull Library for having that resource, without which I could not have written the book. Um, I, I realised that Douglas wrote to lots of people. He wrote to me as a child. Um, he wrote to my father very dutifully, he wrote to his parents less dutifully, but um, but not necessarily completely honestly and openly. The most, the most fulsome [00:23:30] set of letters, um, those with the most raw emotions, those with the most detail of how he really was feeling, how he really was faring. Um, were in those letters to Douglas Lilburn. They wrote to one another between 1944 and 2001. So a long, long period of time. A very long conversation. When I first decided that perhaps for Douglas um, 100th birthday, it would [00:24:00] be nice to focus on his, on his words, his other great passion. Um, uh, he had three great passions. Painting, music, and language. I decided that, that perhaps this, this wonderful set of letters would be the way to go. Um, originally I thought it would be terrific to, to do both sides of the story and have the narrative from both sides. But, um, unfortunately, Lil Byrne's handwriting is like cat scratchings. [00:24:30] Uh, it is honestly, it is so hard to read that I would have needed another ten years to try and make head nor tail of it. So I decided I would, I would stick to my Douglas, um, and create the narrative there. And in fact, the narrative flows on. Very rarely have I had to put a sentence or so in just to, just to make the context, um, flow a little better. So, um, all the content was there. Um, at the same time, we decided we'd do something [00:25:00] for Douglas that was, um, visual as well. So in addition to the book, We have, um, we have the, the MacDiarmid Centenary Art Trail. And, um, about 25 very generous, uh, public collections in New Zealand have, have, have chosen to hang some or all of their paintings, um, from Dunedin to Auckland during November to, as a tribute to Douglas. [00:25:30] Um, and I'm, I'm deeply grateful to those people too, because I, um, I could not have, I could not have created that of my own accord. Um, the, their generosity and their, um, eagerness to help and their enthusiasm for Douglas, um, is the reason that this art trail, um, has been, has, is as successful as it is. And I hope that the map that's been created from, from, for the art trail. Is not only a reference for now, but actually gives people [00:26:00] a, um, a, uh, a longer reference to where Douglas work can be found in public collections throughout the country. I've probably, uh, said enough about, um, how this came to be. Um, I thought I might just finish by, um, reading one more extract. And, uh, and I'm delighted by the extracts that you've chosen. Uh, and how well they fit in. So this is the 4th of [00:26:30] December, 1965. Mac Diamond is writing to Lilburn. Don't blush please, but you represent and assure in some simple daily way the survival of what can be only described as an ideal. A force incredibly robust in one sense and painfully finely balanced in another. I don't need to write pages about it. Nor must I even inquire whether anything in your daily necessity [00:27:00] is nourished by this strange product of contact and distance and time. I can only hope that something does work from it for you, and say that I should be infinitely the worse and poorer without it, and can count on being appalled at anything understood as menacing to it. Nothing that Ariel ever sang about could be richer or stranger, so there you are. Um, you are quite right when you say that often the relationship [00:27:30] between the two douglasses was, um, on a more even keel in correspondence than it was in person. Um, such was the times, such was the personalities, and I thank you all very much for coming today and I hope you'll enjoy reading the book. Thank you. I just wanted to, um, also, um, have. Say a few [00:28:00] words about the paintings here. As you can see, Douglas painted in many different, many different ways. Um, if you, if he was to ask what style he had, he would say, well, I don't think I have a style. I have no style at all, which wasn't true of course. He just had a diversity of style. Um, and this is a lovely little collection of paintings that represent lots of little, little aspects of Douglas. Um, still life. Um, a major, a [00:28:30] major, um, preoccupation on the human condition, part of the Creatures in Series, uh, um, series. And, uh, that was inspired by Piha, Surfers at Piha Beach, where his parents had a holiday place. In fact, they bought the holiday cottage in 1950 in the hopes of grounding Douglas in this beautiful place and that he would stay in New Zealand. That didn't work, but some wonderful A wonderful series of work did come out of it and he painted Piha [00:29:00] quite a number of times. Um, this is, this is Douglas representing, representing his travels. Douglas came and went from New Zealand quite regularly. Um, in the early days he always went by, um, by ship. He preferred to go by cargo ship. Um, so he ended up in lots of places along the way. Um, all sorts of countries, having all sorts of experiences. Later in life, when he was flying by plane, he would never fly more than [00:29:30] five or six hours, if he could get away with it, in one, in one, um, one flight. Because he was a tall man. He got, it was very uncomfortable to be in a plane for any length of time. So this is, this is, um, this is one of the atolls in, um, in the Pacific. I think it's Moria. And he landed there for quite a number of hours while they were refueling to go on to the next place. A bit further around the corner there is another painting, [00:30:00] which is a, um, which is a landscape, um, in the Avignon. Um, Douglas loved his landscape painting, even when it was deeply unpopular, he still painted landscapes because they spoke to him, and that's what it was about. This painting here, on the wall over here, this lovely luscious painting of, um, um, bathers gambling on the beach. This was one of Lilburn's favourite paintings. And in the book we've chosen to include just two [00:30:30] photographs. Here is Douglas with his painting. Um, I'd actually never seen it in colour on the wall before, so this was a very exciting occasion for me to actually see these paintings in real life. Um, And as you look on, look on the other side, here is Lilburn with the same painting in his living room. That painting lives on that living room wall to this day. Um, it is part of the, um, the, um, 22 Ascot, [00:31:00] 27, 22 Ascot Terrace House that is now run by the Lilburn Trust, uh, as a, uh, residence for visiting musicians. So this painting, That only came off the wall at one stage when, when Lilburn was divesting himself of things. And he thought perhaps it would be better in a, in a, in a collection. He, um, he offered it to the university here. And they were a bit slow to pick it up. And, um, Lilburn wasn't at all happy about the [00:31:30] replacement painting he'd put on the wall. So he put the painting back up on the wall and said that it would remain there till the, till the end of his days. Because that was where it belonged. Thanks mum. I'd now like to invite Stuart McDiamond up the front and Stuart's going to deliver a toast to Douglas. [00:32:00] Thank you Sonia. Good afternoon, or evening. Um, I... I grew up knowing that I had a cousin who was an artist, but my father was very disparaging of Douglas work. So, uh, um, I knew that I had a cousin who lived in Paris who painted rubbishy paintings. [00:32:30] My, I've had a very interesting career, totally, totally different from the work of Douglas, but It's happened that, um, I began to go to Paris for work frequently. The, in Paris, the headquarters of the World Organization for Animal Health, the OIE. And I realized, I have this opportunity and I'm coming here. [00:33:00] Initially it was twice a year, but then it got, it was two to four times a year until I retired. And I thought, I've got a cousin I should try and meet him, because I used to go for meetings two weeks at a time, two weeks in February and two weeks in September, and although the work in the week was intense, there was always the weekends, which were downtime when you're by yourself and you've seen stuff. So [00:33:30] anyway, I found out, I found his address and I wrote to him. On paper, because it was before the days of email. And, we, I received an invitation to go round to his place one evening and have dinner and meet him. So, I set off from my hotel and I was thinking, I know at home when I go to somebody's place for dinner, I take something with me. I take a, you know, a bottle of wine, so. [00:34:00] I don't, I'm not a wine person really, um, I've, and I never took any notice of French wines because I never wanted to invest the effort into learning about stuff that, you know, was, anyway. I figured that if you buy on price you'll be alright. And because I like red wine, um, I went into a liquor shop on the... [00:34:30] way walking to Douglas's place, and I started looking at the wines, looking at the top shelf, looking for the expensive stuff. And my eyes strayed into Scotch whiskey. I like Scotch, and one of the things I liked about going to France is that Scotch is relatively cheap compared to here. After the Japanese, [00:35:00] the French are the biggest consumers of Scotch whisky. Um, the average Frenchman drinks as much Scotch in a month as he drinks brandy in a year. So, um, there you go, there's a factoid. Anyway, I looked and there was a bottle. It was a nice looking bottle, but it came in a polished wooden box with a little brass hook. To keep it shut, and I thought, oh, that'll do. [00:35:30] And so I bought it, and um, turned up at my cousin's place, and we introduced each other, and I presented Douglas with this polished wooden box, which he opened, and inside was a bottle of Talisker whisky. Which, Talisker turns out it's his favourite whisky, and at one stage, his mother's family used to own the distillery. So, [00:36:00] every time I visited Douglas, we would have, I would have two or three Talisker whiskies, and Douglas, even right to the end where he was not supposed to drink, would have a teaspoonful. This isn't quite... Talisker Whiskey, but I want to, I want to propose a toast to, I think the, uh, one of my favourite [00:36:30] male relatives who, uh, in my affections, uh, certainly took the place of my father. So, I want to drink to Douglas. Thank you. Thank you very much, Stuart. So, in closing, on behalf of the MacDiamonds Arts Trust, there's [00:37:00] a couple of people we'd really love to thank today. Firstly, to Victoria University for co hosting this anniversary occasion and displaying their MacDiamonds paintings here in the Milk and Honey Café throughout November as part of the Centenary Art Trail. Sophie, if you'd like to come forward, um... And please accept a copy of the book MacDiamond by Dr. Nellie Fennay for your art resource library. And thank you very much for your [00:37:30] assistance with the, the timing and the trail. Um, next to the Alexander Turnbull Library for allowing extracts from Douglas letters and poems from their archives to be reproduced. Without that repository of correspondence there would have been no book. Chris, please accept a copy of Letters to Lilburn for the library. [00:38:00] A big thank you also to another essential member of the MacDiamonds Arts Trust. Please put your hands together for Margot Corhonen, who has designed and produced our new website and also the art. Um, trail map, which has taken Douglas creative legacy to new [00:38:30] audiences. Thank you so much, Margot. So thank you all for joining us this afternoon, and for your friendship, and for supporting the Centenary Art Trail and Letters to Lilburn. Mum will be around for the next half of an hour or so, signing books if you'd like your copies signed. In addition to Letters to Lilburn, we've got a couple of copies of the biography Colours of a Life and the art history book MacDiamond with us. Please take your [00:39:00] time to enjoy these beautiful artworks as well. We'll be sharing some photos from tonight on Facebook and Instagram, so search for Douglas MacDiamond if you're interested in seeing those. And if you happen to be in Auckland on Wednesday or Friday this week, we have events at Takapuna Library and Old Government House, so let me know if you need details of those. As Douglas would say, all great good to you. Thank you for joining us.
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