Painting

Painting art is a visual artistic medium in which artists use various pigments, such as oil, acrylic, watercolor, or gouache, to apply color to a surface, typically canvas or paper, to create two-dimensional artworks. Paintings can encompass a wide range of styles and subjects, offering artists a versatile means of self-expression and storytelling.

Gavin Chai - Aotearoa Artist

Gavin Chai

Gavin Chai - Aotearoa Artist
Self-portrait

THE PRODIGY

At the relatively young age of 17 years, Malaysian-born portrait artist Gavin Chai will hold his first solo exhibition at the Estuary Arts Centre in Orewa in May this year. This follows outstanding achievements in winning both KG Fraser award (best in show) and the gold medal (most successful artist of the show) at the 2014 Royal Easter Show. Gavin also had a painting selected as a finalist in the 2014 Adam Portraiture Award and placed with the nation-wide touring exhibition. In this article Gavin tells how the work of the old masters inspired him to create and pursue a career as a professional artist.

I started drawing and painting when I was 12 years old and trained under an artist in Malaysia where many materials such as oil paints and acrylics are in short supply. I was only taught how to use pencil, watercolour and oil pastels.

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Anne Michelle Johal - Aotearoa Artist

Anne Michelle Johal

Anne Michelle Johal - Aotearoa Artist

THE ART OF ILLUSTRATION

My entire family are passionate readers, creatives, entrepreneurs, and story tellers. My father, a farmer, collected humorous books with illustrations full of wonderful little stories that tickled, and he taught us how to draw cartoons as a child. Beatrix Potter’s little handheld books, with her delicious little watercolour paintings, were read to us by our grandmother. Dad’s books included those written and illustrated by A.S. Paterson, the Andy Capp series, and many others. The coloured line illustrations and stories of Asterix and Obelix, the black and white cartoons of Murray Ball, The What a Mess collection by Frank Muir with Joseph Wright’s wonderful illustrations, Quentin Blake’s work, among others, became part of our favourite collections growing up.

A passionate reader, from a very young age, I lived inside these books as movies in my imagination. The narratives of people and places, emotion and experience captured and transported me out into the world of cultural difference and exciting possibilities, such a contrast to the farm life.

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Claudia Recorean - Aotearoa Artist

Claudia Recorean

 

aotearoa-artist-claudia-recoreanCONTEMPORARY EXHIBITIONIST

Claudia Recorean has been exhibiting her contemporary artwork in far-flung locations such as Germany and Mongolia and more recently right here in New Zealand. Here she tracks her career from the start.

The start of my artist career was marked, when I was ten years old and my grandfather sent me out to burn the rubbish. Watching the flames melt plastic into fluids and turning objects into new shapes initiated along lasting fascination with material transformation and the wish to spin straw into gold.

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John Unasa

John Unasa - Aotearoa Artist

CONSUMED BY PASSION

After many years of focusing on various career paths John Unasa recalls that it was becoming quite apparent his desire to create from a very young age was still very much alive and something had to be done about it. Now, at 35, full of life experience, qualifications and a range of skills, he says he feels the time is right for him to put his full focus into his creative passion.

“My inspirations emanate from my feelings about my physical and social environment, my mood, my imagination, my culture, pop culture and my education,” he says.

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Geoff Noble

Geoff Noble - Aotearoa Artist

FREEDOM AND MOVEMENT

There is a lot of paint and colour, lots of colour. Bright, vibrant and even startling. And movement, always movement, large bold images leap out demanding attention, captured but seemingly not, on the cusp of rising and falling but nowhere near frozen.

There are paintings all over the place when entering a very cluttered Tahuna Studios in Nelson. Some are complete, overs still in that moment of creation. New and old it is an eclectic mix. Added to this are posters, surfboards, skateboards, and all manner of tools.

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Ben Timmins - Aotearoa Artist

Ben Timmins

Ben Timmins - Aotearoa Artist

THE NATURAL

Three time winner of the ‘People’s Choice’ award at the NZ Art Show, Ben Timmins is a well-known ‘natural artist’ working out of his studio in Parapara, Golden Bay. In this article he talks about his life, work and penchant for ‘un-learning’.

Ben Timmins paints with oils on wooden panels. He says the painting process and materials used are deliberately employed to engage the viewer on many experiential levels. There is an underlying resonance throughout these paintings, nature as a subject matter is painted upon nature itself, the wood grain is integrated into the compositions with both paint and subject.

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1917-aotearoa-artist-karen-vernon

Karen Vernon

Karen Vernon - Aotearoa Artist

UNDER A BENIGN SPIRIT

“My art doesn’t stand on words. What is on my canvas I sometimes can’t explain away with clever talk. It is not an intellectual process, my paintings are intuitive, and, I feel, painted under the tutelage of a benign spirit.” So says Karen Vernon whose journey into the art world began in 1993 while attending American Folk Art classes in Auckland.

Largely self-taught and without any formal art training Karen says she has been fortunate to have had the guidance of a number of “wonderful” art tutors to get to the level she is at today. “I was a student of Jayne Sprott, and attended her watercolour class for three years. It was at this point I developed a passion for art and began trying other mediums, but staying in the realms of more traditional realistic painting.

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