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…
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.
Brian Millard
IN HIS OWN WORDS
Brian Millard, who has been successfully exhibiting paintings since he was in his early twenties, won a scholarship to art school when he was eleven years old but left for a job in advertising at the age of sixteen. Since then he has successfully combined being both artist and writer.
He has been a graphic designer, an illustrator, a cartoonist, an advertising art director, a copywriter, a writer for television and radio, a TV producer, a journalist and the editor in chief of two magazines - one a sports magazine in the States. For a decade he and his partner Marilyn Palmer, also a respected watercolourist, ran their own gallery near Queenstown. They now live and paint in Auckland.
Sam Earp
THE CALL OF THE SEA
Despite drawing and painting landscape scenes and trees in watercolour since he was a child, a bad grade in the sixth form put Samuel Earp off pursuing a career in art and he went to university where he studied plant sciences.
Born in Guernsey, Samuel’s first job was in London. Not enjoying either London or earning much money, he took up painting again for something to do. He visited a gallery in Exeter and saw the amazing seascape by Cornish artist, Peter Cosslett.
Colin Hoare
FAMILY PORTRAIT
Colin Hoare enjoys painting portraits. Family members, friends and better-known faces are all fair game for this self-taught artist.
Colin likes to work from photographs, saying he does not really like doing pictures of people posing or pulling a big smile. “I like it when they are relaxed and acting naturally. I think that it is a privilege to paint a portrait of someone and try to be honest,” he says. “I draw using a light pencil and then paint with a brush. I prefer painting in oil because the paint takes longer to dry than acrylic paint; this means that I don’t have to keep remixing my paint in order to make the same colour.
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.
Mehrdad Tahan
KNOW YOURSELF
From an early age Mehrdad Tahan had an interest in drawing and studied techniques used by the Old Masters. By the age of twenty, he had established his first studio where he taught drawing and calligraphy as well as exhibiting his own works.
In 1990 Mehrdad left Iran for New Zealand, which resulted in a pause in art while he improved his English and learnt about our culture. Family reasons dictated a move to Sweden, and a new culture and language to learn. 1999 saw Mehrdad return to New Zealand and settle in Christchurch.
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.”
David Foley
A LINEAR PERSPECTIVE
For much of his life David Foley worked in commercial interior design and only took up serious watercolour painting on retiring, attending various workshops in New Zealand, Italy and Australia.
“While I took an interest in drawing from a very early age I did not have any formal art training at all,” he says. He did however attend the Brixton School of Building and Architecture in the UK from 1949 - 1952 and completed a five year apprenticeship in Display and Signwriting in Hamilton.