Researching Bill Sutton

He represented the Hawkes Bay electorate in Parliament from 1984, when he defeated Richard Harrison, to 1990, when he was defeated by Michael Laws. His highest position was Chairman of Parliament's Finance and Expenditure Select Committee from 1988 to 1990.

He was subsequently elected a councillor on the Hawke's Bay Regional Council from 1992 to 1995.

He is a brother of former Labour MP and Cabinet Minister Jim Sutton. They were elected to Parliament each for the first time in 1984. Bill Sutton's then wife Jacque Aldridge gave birth to their second son David the night of the election.

Sutton has a PhD in biochemistry (Massey University) and worked as a research scientist from 1969 to 1984. After retiring from politics he worked as a senior policy analyst from 1996 to 2007.

He now lives in Napier and is a published poet. appearing in Takahe, Poetry New Zealand, Jaam, and other literary magazines. His second published poetry collection Billy Button - A Life (HB Poetry Press, 2016) included a brief autobiographical summary.

He was tutored by many well-known Canterbury artists, including Colin Lovell-Smith, Evelyn Page and Archibald Nicoll and gained his Diploma of Fine Arts in 1937. In 1947 he travelled to London where he studied for a time at the Anglo-French centre in St John's Wood. On returning to New Zealand in 1949 he took up a teaching position at Canterbury University College School of Art and was appointed senior lecturer in 1959. During the 1940s and 1950s Sutton followed in the tradition of fellow Canterbury artists, such as Rita Angus, Colin and Rata Lovell-Smith and Louise Henderson, developing a distinctive interpretation of the Canterbury landscape. Sutton continued to teach at the school until his retirement in 1979. Sutton continued to paint until 1993.

In the 1980 Queen's Birthday Honours, Sutton was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, for services to art.

Sutton's paintings are typically signed / credited as WA Sutton. Much of his work shows the influence of New Zealand regionalism as with fellow Cantabrian Rita Angus. In 1963, Sutton built a house in Templar Street in the Christchurch suburb of Richmond. Until his retirement in 1992, he painted most of his works there. The house was bought by a former curator of the Robert McDougall Art Gallery and it was his intention to gift it as a home for an artist in residence scheme. Following the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, the house is located in the Residential Red Zone and was thus purchased by the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority; it is hoped for the house to be kept despite the red zoning.A retrospective of his work was held at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū in 2003.

In March 2009, Sutton was commemorated as one of the Twelve Local Heroes, and a bronze bust of him was unveiled outside the Christchurch Arts Centre.