Presentation Wins the Day
Had a rejection slip recently? According to the popular US-based online gallery, Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery, if artists…
Sorting white from white
WHICH WHITE IS WHICH Some would say that the most important colour choice artists make is the white they choose to…
Julia Henderson
THE DISTINCTIVE VOICE
Growing up and being schooled in the United Kingdom, Julia Henderson attended a very conservative grammar school, where art was not considered an appropriate career choice. She studied Biological Sciences and went on to do a BSc and PhD in Ecology. She still felt the urge to get involved with the arts though and after immigrating to New Zealand 25 years ago, she obsessively studied art, taking numerous classes and workshops covering all aspects of art – drawing, painting in all media, print-making, colour theory and art history including Maori and Pacific art.
After deciding to take the next step and try to make a career out of art, she began entering competitions, experiencing some success. Finally a friend convinced her to approach a gallery with her work, and to her delight and beyond her wildest dreams, Julia was offered a solo exhibition. The sell-out show, held nearly 20 years ago, cemented Julia’s ambition and she has prospered ever since.
Bari Duncan
A DRIVING FORCE
After trying various work prospects, such as clerical, retail,
bank and so on, Bari Duncan finally decided to follow her
lifelong passion. “Right from pre-school,” she reflects, “my mother couldn’t keep up with my lust for colouring-in books. I have always longed to follow my heart and get focused on my painting. I just kept pushing, struggling, learning and trying until the time was right.”
Having been dealt a number of blows on her journey, Bari reflects, “My art is everything to me, it’s who I am, a driving force. I love that it has helped me through the hardest, roughest times in my life and when it seemed everything around was crumbling, it kept me focused and positive.” On the subject of education, she has not attended art school or university.
Angela Murray
MOVING DALI
“My biggest creative highlight was selling two pieces to the same buyers and then discovering they had moved an original Dali to make room for one of my paintings, that was a real buzz!” holistic life coach and passionate acrylic artist Angela Murray pronounces.
So while Dali is hanging in a different light, Angela has no illusions of grandeur and maintains that ongoing training is a key component in her creative life. “I learned so much through many courses in Newcastle and Nottingham in the UK and Timaru, as well as a lot of self-teaching over the past 30 years,” she rationalises. Indeed, she still attends workshops to brush up on certain skills, the most recent being a weeklong course in Bali with US artist and author of ‘Brave Intuitive Painting’, Flora Bowley and 16 other artists.
Melissa Wallace
MY LIFE IS COMPLETE
Taupo Artist Melissa Wallace has had a journey of self discovery since having a chance discussion with a fellow mother at the net ball courts just over 10 years ago.
It was the seemingly standard question of “what do you do?” that started it all. The answer was “I’m a full time artist.” That day, and an invite home for coffee while a painting was being completed for a deadline, was the beginning of Melissa’s journey, finding her way home to that which makes her life complete.
Fiona Hayward
GOING SOLO
Fiona Hayward was highly rated in two prestigious New Zealand art awards. Her works can be found as far afield as the USA and Australia. She is currently working on a new series of paintings of endangered species from around the world which, she says, will enable her to host her first solo exhibition.
Whilst a deep and profound love of nature lies at the core of her inspiration, it is a peaceful inner feeling of freedom and joy in creating a new artwork that drives and motivates Fiona to paint and draw. Although she has had no formal art training, Auckland born Fiona says her capacity to draw and paint stems from her mother, a talented artist in her own right, who encouraged Fiona from a young age to pursue her artistic bent.
Kathryn Millard
THE INNER ARTIST
It is an intense and intimate relationship and interaction with the world around her that feeds Kathryn Millard’s artistic soul.
“My life is about energy, rhythm and sensation, and translating that into a piece of art,” she declares. “It is about inventing the perfect technique, my own unique language for my response to nature. It is the experience of what I see happening all around me that stimulates me and gets me going, not the thing itself, that is the underlying subject of my work.”
Pauline Allomes
THE FINER DETAIL
A strong interest in art as a child did not hold much sway in the early 1960s when women did not go to art school and were expected to become nurses or secretaries, get married young and stay at home to look after the children.
Pauline Allomes was 50 before she was free to follow a desire that had been with her all her life and enrol at art school. “Through the years of raising children I had a strong interest in fibre and on entering art school thought I would become a fibre artist,” Pauline says, “this changed the minute I discovered paint, pastel, pen and ink.”
Rebekah Codlin
REAL EMOTION
Realistic art has been described as not only recording the subject matter truthfully but also avoiding artistic conventions and resisting idealisation.
Some of this rings true of Rebekah Codlin’s work but the more one looks at the images she creates the more ideals and raw emotions pour through, attacking your senses from all directions with poignant effect.
This she achieves through an intelligent use of light and colour. So whatever term one may use to describe her work, Rebekah’s art is certainly not tame but rather demands attention and scrutiny.