"Tiefschwarz - from the Tiergarten to the Schwarzwald" features more than a dozen works painted during a five-month stint in Shoneberg, Berlin, this year.
"Berlin is a very vibrant, creative city, with many artists, musicians and other creatives living there. Kind of like Dunedin, but on a much larger scale," Foley said this week.
"It's still one of the cheaper places to live in Northern Europe, too." The exhibition includes a dozen small acrylic studies on paper of central Berlin park Tiergarten and four oils of Alpine der Schwarzwald (The Black Forest).
"The Black Forest has long held a fascination for me, from hearing tales when I was a child," Foley said.
"I have always wanted to visit this area. Having been a painter of forest-scapes for many years, this was `the' place to visit."
However, he was surprised at what he discovered there.
"The incongruity of what one imagines the place to be like, and what one finds on arrival, can be hard to assess. What struck me was the steepness of the land on which the majority of forest lies, as all arable land is used for farming," he said.
"The irony of coming across a stand of untouched beech forest was not lost on me either, inspiring two from the four works in this series.
"Have I really travelled half way around the world to find something so reminiscent of the South Island beech forest found back home in New Zealand? So it would seem."
"Tiefschwarz - from the Tiergarten to the Schwarzwald" opens at the Artist's Room at midday on Saturday and runs until November 3.
