Initially only trained at school, Tania Jack needed a change and took a course with the Learning Connexion in Wellington where she studied for three years, achieving a Diploma and Honours Diploma, and continued on towards her Advanced Diploma in Art & Creativity.
From high school age Tania had taken Art & Art History through to seventh form and as far as she was concerned there was no other subject she was interested in. “We had a particularly inspirational teacher who was a great local (Wakatipu) artist, the late Alan Cooke, and also a neighbour who motivated me a lot.” Tania’s father’s second cousin is the painter Neil Bartlett and he had always been inspirational as well and lived nearby.
Tania got serious about painting when her kids were little and they were in Scotland for a few years. “I studied Multimedia at University and joined some part-time watercolour classes up there, then incorporated some natural media paintings with multimedia to create illustrations and animations from my paintings. Some of my work was featured in a graduate showcase edition of the Computer Arts Magazine at the time. The light in the UK is nice and soft for painting and the historic places were all very inspiring.”
Tania’s motivation to be an artist was her constant drive to create things, most often paint and draw, but also illustrate. “I like interpreting my observations on canvas; forgotten places, run down buildings, and places with a strong presence, a feeling. I also love painting NZ’s wild animals and native birds. I don’t see any species as a pest, we humans are the newcomers and the destroyers of habitat.”
See more about Tania here.
