Artists

You could call Amber Emm the accidental artist. She wasn’t very good at reading, or writing, or spelling. Her happy place was always drawing. She never thought it would be something she would end up doing as a career. But now she’s an award-winning floral artist with her work featured in high end galleries across Auckland.
“You dream about it, you hope it will happen, you sort of wonder ‘Will I ever break through?’ It’s like anything, if you keep at it, it will get better,” she says from her small home studio nestled in the outskirts of Whenuapai, West Auckland. With light streaming in through the French windows, and the soft echo of her latest romance audiobook humming through the room, she is hard at work painting her latest piece. A bunch of pink roses. Amber wasn’t always a floral artist. “I really enjoy boats and coastal New Zealand, it’s where we live and what I enjoy. But with my teaching, one of my ladies was doing a lot of floral work and just with helping her I thought they were pretty cool and quite challenging. Having never done them before, I went into that field because of the challenge of trying to create them,” she says, her eyes never leaving the canvas as she paints a smooth and precise green vein of a leaf. For Amber, it is about capturing the beauty of life. “We are surrounded by beauty every day, it’s just about trying to zero in on things that are beautiful,” she says. Her red framed glasses speckled with flecks of old white paint as she focuses on mixing more green paint, the walls covered in paint from countless paintings. Amber’s work is recognised for her use of colour, with the high depth and contrast used by her to create pieces of photorealism. See more about Amber here.

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Never being able to settle on an interesting career, despite having concentrated on music, sport and sketching during school, and recovering from anxiety/depression due to his mum’s early passing, Paul Coney became fascinated with nature’s beauty and complexity. As a self-taught artist, his interest saw him producing artworks from which he derived great satisfaction. Therapeutically this worked as, like the phoenix, he rose above and started selling his work through the New Zealand Fellowship of Artists. His work sold well, and this spurred him to continue on this path.

Initially Paul was interested in watercolour and this was his preferred medium for over 20 years: “The beauty and discipline required to paint with them fascinated me, coupled with the challenge of preconceiving the stages and strategies that you have to adopt to successfully complete a work, drew me to them as a medium.” The life of an artist has suited him very well, as basically he is his own boss, flexible with time. He has found that producing and working at something he is passionate about has given him a deep sense of satisfaction and fulfilment “I find my inspiration from life, beauty and what surrounds me. I subscribe to the famous English poet John Keats who said, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” If I can live and try to always be aware and mindful of the incredible and magnificent beauty that surrounds us all, I am living a worthwhile, full and satisfying life. I believe we have an enormous amount to learn from nature and beauty that is beyond anyone’s complete understanding at the moment. In many ways I find solace in nature and I guess painting it helps me to be closer to the source of that solace.” Admiring many artists, Paul mentions John Singer Sargent as a consummate, brilliant artist. “My favourite oil painter of the moment is Thomas Faed whose work I saw on a recent trip to Scotland. I admire his absolutely meticulous skills with a paintbrush and the life and light that exude from his work. I know that hundreds and hundreds of hours have gone into the creation of his paintings and he has not only produced a work of great beauty and brilliance but also left a part of himself on the canvas. Both of these artists are incredible exponents of the highest levels of painting skills and have perfected their own style, which leaves a lasting memory and a tribute to their profession.”
Visit Paul's website here.

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Helen Leigh believes that ‘self-doubt’ is a huge hindrance to many artists; always feeling on the back foot for perhaps not having a formal art education and maybe a lack of contacts. This has proved to be the obstacle in getting further in her art career. “However,” she maintains, “if you are willing to put the work and time in, you can make your mark, and pursuing this avidly, reaching out online and promoting my own work has really helped me in my art career and with sales.”

During the past six years Helen has built up an online art gallery, showcasing and selling her works. Have a look at ‘The Fascinate Gallery’, fascinategallery.business.site. She has also been part of three charity fundraising shows, for the LGBT community, Cancer Society and the Christchurch City Mission. Her upcoming solo exhibition, which is the second in over a decade, has been completely organised by herself, including setting up an ‘Event’ on Facebook for the first time too. Helen has always sketched and doodled. In her 20s, she decided to pursue the subject further, reading and trying every kind of art style she could find in her library. She practiced but found she hadn’t really gelled with any particular form and her art remained a part-time hobby. About six years ago, Helen was struck down with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) and while she was housebound, as a method of escape, she delved into her past knowledge and refined what she loved into two styles: Abstract Expressionist drip painting and Surrealism. “Art was literally a lifeline for me, to be able to express myself and my feelings not only got me through my illness but has also given me an amazing creative identity – something that is all mine, that I wouldn’t trade for anything!”
See more about Helen here: Helen Leigh

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Painting in oils is a common enough practice, although before oils really became popular and were readily available, tempera was the painting medium of choice. Veronique Tatoue is passionate about this medium. She also does mosaic work when she finds the time.
Tempera is a method of painting with pigments typically dispersed in egg yolk. The method was used in Europe for fine painting, mainly on wood panels, from the 12th or early 13th centuries until the 15th, when it gave way to oils. Perhaps it is apt that the old European style attracted a young French painter, who now resides in Christchurch. Veronique has given herself a pseudonym ‘Chaveron’ after her grandfather, Charles, a painter himself. Painting with tempera has ties back to Europe, Byzantine art. “All my life I have painted, but I started to paint with tempera because I started painting Byzantine icons from 1990. A nun taught me for three months then after this I continued learning by myself. “My biggest motivation is my passion for what I am doing – it is different and tempera is an old technique, a very long process and you must be patient and take your time.” Byzantine icons are religious work sof art, deep in the culture of traditional churches, with subjects including Christ, the Virgin Mary, and various saints and angels. “I have painted 13 icons at ‘the cross station’ in the town of Sanary sur Mer, in France in 2000,” she says. She also uses gesso when preparing each canvas. This is a time-consuming practice.

See more about Veronique here.

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