Drawing

From a small child, Sandy Wright always loved to study nature. From the time she left an open box full of snails in the kitchen overnight and realized in the morning that they can cover quite a lot of ground, to the time she put tadpoles in her grandfather’s water butt, which he used every morning for shaving. “I had spent so much of my life working on other people’s projects, I decided it was time to work on my own. I met a lovely lady at a local art group pop up shop in Paihia and she invited me to join the local art group. That was just the motivation I needed.”

Sandy worked for 17 years in a photography lab in Cambridge, England, retouching and restoring old and new photographs. This gave her the opportunity to work with paints, pencils and an airbrush. “I think that’s where my eye for detail comes from. To me, every photograph had a story to tell and that’s what I aim for in my paintings.” Eventually, computers came along and Sandy decided she preferred the hands-on approach, rather than working with a mouse. She and her partner decided to take the opportunity of a new start and in 2006 they arrived in New Zealand. “When I was in England I would travel from Cambridge to London for the day. I suppose most other women in their 20s, might take the opportunity to do some shopping but I would spend the day in the Tate gallery. I could spend hours just wondering round. One painting I went back to time and time again was ‘The Lady of Shalott’ by John William Waterhouse. It fascinated me. Of course I read the poem, but I liked to make up my own stories for the image. My stories always had happier endings.” Having approached a lot of publishers with her children’s books and finding no takers, it was her Mum who persuaded her not to give up. With a lot of help from her husband and friends, she had the books printed herself. “I am over the moon with the result. They continue to find their way all around the world.” Sandy’s children’s books and most of her artwork tell a story and carry a message, a sort of ‘call to arms’. “I believe we are at a time when we need to work together if we are going to keep the beauty and diversity of New Zealand and indeed the world. If we could all put aside our differences and see the bigger picture, it might not be too late to save our amazing planet. I hope to keep improving and keep working on highlighting New Zealand’s most vulnerable species.

Visit Sandy's website here

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Having dabbled in art since childhood, Ros Beck has always felt especially passionate about horses. “I remember drawing a huge galloping horse on the chalk board at primary school which stayed up there for weeks!” In the late 2010s she approached galleries with puppet horse paintings, which sold very well, but it wasn’t until five years ago that she could devote herself entirely to her passion, with the support of her husband.

Ros trained with Mehrdad Tahan (featured in TNZAM in 2014) every Saturday for a year, amongst various other classes and she also belonged to a folk art group, which she found really helpful for brushwork. Other than that, she is self-taught. “When I discovered acrylic pouring (through a class at The Drawing Room) I became obsessed with it and over five years of developing my techniques and pouring medium recipes, I am feeling confident and joyous about my creative process. At the age of 60 I resent doing anything other than painting and get such a feeling of self-worth and value when I actually get paid to do something I love soo much.” Strongly supporting greyhound rescue and re-homing, Ros has donated many paintings to the ‘Save The Macau Greyhounds’ effort to re-home over 500 dogs worldwide from Macau. “I’m very proud to have been able to support this amazing team. Closer to home I support GAP (Greyhounds As Pets) and have donated from my exhibition in Riccarton and local sales.” Ros finds most of her inspiration comes from horses and dogs. “My full name is Rosamund which means ‘protector of horses or horses protect me’, so my first love is horses. I’ve loved them for as long as I can remember. The family home did not always feel the safest and I struggled in my early school years but I always had horses in my head. Of course they are beautiful, amazing animals and are just living works of art. Capturing this on canvas is a joy. Not everyone loves greyhounds and horses, so I do try to paint other things, which I enjoy, but I always come back to my passion. I have four horses and my whippet Louie so I’m never short of inspiration.
Follow Ros here.

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First featured in TNZAM Series 1, Issue 4 Volume 4, Lynne Sinclair Taylor has come a long way in the past five years. She is a self-taught artist who, before the internet was available, had many visits to the library to gain knowledge from art books on techniques and to be inspired by looking at art.
Having always been creative and drawing for as long as she can remember, Lynne won prizes as a child for colouring in and drawing. Amongst the art-related positions she has held, the one she enjoyed most was being a fashion illustrator as advertising manageress for a department store. Designing and making her own clothes for many years, she also won prizes in fashion design. Because of her love for drawing and painting, it seemed a natural progression to begin painting. “I am a realist at heart and I began with drawing and painting people’s portraits. When I was on a ferry on the Mediterranean in my youth, I started sketching people and before I knew it, I had people requesting their portraits and ended up sketching nine portraits!” Early in her career, inspiration came from Rembrandt’s use of light and shade, Monet’s techniques and use of colour, and particularly the Fauvists for their creative use of colour. “There are many artists I admire today, too many to name. I went on my own journey with different mediums and technique and I had a passion for chalk pastels for a number of years. I also ventured into impressionism, expressionism, and abstracts. “When I first started painting seriously about 25 years ago I entered a few competitions and won five first prizes in the first five years. When I won the overall prize at the Royal Easter Show in Auckland they rang me a couple of days before the prize-giving to see if I would be present. I said I wouldn’t be attending and they strongly recommended that it would be in my best interest to attend, which I did. It was a wonderful surprise to take the overall prize. My first exhibition was in an Auckland gallery in Devonport and I was so encouraged when most of the paintings sold in one week.”

Follow Lynne here.

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Over the years, Kay Goldfinch has attended workshops and classes at Inverlochy Art School in Wellington, Wellington High School night classes, Monash University in Melbourne, Boon’s Pottery in Singapore and life drawing workshops in Toronto. In 2008 she was invited to be a part of a ceramic exhibition in Zongshan, China, Hong Kong and Singapore, and was awarded a Certificate of Honour. A solo watercolour exhibition in Singapore also provided a great learning experience. Her work has ended up in Australia, New Zealand, UK, Germany, France, Singapore, Hong Kong, America and Canada.
“I have drawn and painted most of my life and after selling my hairdressing business and starting a family I had the opportunity and time to develop my art and ceramic interests. Creativity has always been a big part of my life, so I guess this all came very naturally. For me the biggest inspiration for my work has been travel and the opportunity to live and work in other countries. The inspiration is endless, whether it’s the people, the colours, the culture or the different architecture etc. It seems to supply a passion for my creativity. I admire artists like Matisse, Van Gogh and Gauguin etc, and they have inspired me because of their use of colour and texture – they were not afraid to experiment. They seemed to paint the way that they wanted to even though this resulted in rejection by the art establishment. I think as an artist you see the world in a different light. To have an idea and then follow through with creating something special is very rewarding. And seeing people respond to your work, especially if it is in a positive way, is magic!
Kay Goldfinch

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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.

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