HAPPY HEART, HAPPY ART
Moving from one place to the next can be a drag. Boxing up your life in the hope of finding your happy place; eventually realizing this is more than just a location it also becomes your state of mind too. For Lorraine Bailey this has happened a few times, after a stint in Auckland, she settled in a new happy place – Matamata in the Waikato – however all this came about from her beginnings in Rhodesia, Africa where her love of the environment there spurred her creative desire.
“My environment plays a pivotal role in my creativity. In fact, I can’t imagine what my art would look like without it. I believe, that it’s your surroundings that trigger all the senses to influence your heart and soul, which you then interpret onto canvas/paper. I particularly enjoy capturing that moment when light bounces or reveals something on the subject causing the viewer to pause in reflection. When I lived in Rhodesia and then in South Africa it was the wild life that influenced my work. My father was a Scoutmaster, and so from a very young age I became very aware of my natural surroundings,” she says.