Deborah Taylor
Never having had any formal art training, Deborah Taylor attempted an online course a few years ago but found the deadlines and stress of it all too much as well as working full time. Other financial constraints had left her feeling inadequate and floundering and after being diagnosed with bipolar, she found art to be cathartic and a means with which to express herself. With a level 5 in Academic Writing, she also likes to write and compose poetry.
“I have always been interested in art since high school especially, my art teacher Mr Hebley was a great teacher. I did unfortunately muck around a lot and never passed art as a subject but I always kept on painting and creating art whenever I could. When my children were little I would always have art stuff set up for them to express themselves through drawing and painting or making salt dough craft. I started painting again when my children were older, as a hobby.”
Ken Tanner
ROOM TO MOVE
Brought up in the London suburbs and having studied art as a school subject, an enthusiastic teacher encouraged Ken Tanner to maintain his interest in art, which he has done for over 30 years. Training as an engineer and then working in construction management, Ken found there was not much room for creativity in his daytime work, so art as a hobby became a welcome respite, giving his creative mind room to move. He moved to New Zealand in 1974 but busy with his wife and children, and his work, he only really started to paint in the 1990s. Since then painting has become a large part of his life.
Ken’s inspiration, he says, is mostly to do with the creation of an image, rather than trying to convey some political message. “I really enjoy the realism but I did an abstract course some years ago and I now also enjoy developing the realistic image into a more abstract form. I have entered some of these paintings into the Howick Art Group’s annual competition and they have taken 1st prize. One of the judges, Evan Woodruff, said that the work was more abstractionism than pure abstract.”
Karen Gourley
IMMERSIVE DETAIL
“I love when an idea in my head comes to life on paper and translating that idea into a visual representation. The tactile nature of pastels is very therapeutic. I love sharing my love of nature with people and am so honoured when people choose to buy my artwork to hang on their wall.” So says Karen Gourley, a pastel artist, born in Ireland and now gracing New Zealand with her tremendous talent.
Her move to New Zealand means she has the opportunity to be immersed in nature, and with so many birds and wildlife on the doorstep, she feels compelled to paint them all. “I have always loved art from a young age, watching Tony Hart on Hartbeat and carefully copying along as I watched. Art was my favourite subject at school and art is a part of who I am. After studying, I followed a career as an accountant and took up painting in 2007 as a hobby.” After completing a Natural History Illustration course in 2018 she started applying the learned techniques to her pastel paintings.
Lorraine Bailey
HAPPY HEART, HAPPY ART
HAPPY HEART, HAPPY ARTMoving from one place to the next can be a drag. Boxing up your life in the hope of finding your happy place; eventually realizing this is more than just a location it also becomes your state of mind too. For Lorraine Bailey this has happened a few times, after a stint in Auckland, she settled in a new happy place – Matamata in the Waikato – however all this came about from her beginnings in Rhodesia, Africa where her love of the environment there spurred her creative desire.
“My environment plays a pivotal role in my creativity. In fact, I can’t imagine what my art would look like without it. I believe, that it’s your surroundings that trigger all the senses to influence your heart and soul, which you then interpret onto canvas/paper. I particularly enjoy capturing that moment when light bounces or reveals something on the subject causing the viewer to pause in reflection. When I lived in Rhodesia and then in South Africa it was the wild life that influenced my work. My father was a Scoutmaster, and so from a very young age I became very aware of my natural surroundings,” she says.
Tammy Gabriel
FINDING IDENTITY
FINDING IDENTITYBy Matt Mortimer
The great Roman philosopher Cicero was credited as saying; “The face is a picture of the mind, as the eyes are its interpreter.” These words seem to resound beyond a quotation and take on a literal meaning for Albany-based portrait artist, Tammy Gabriel.
“I get inspired by photos of interesting compositions, but mostly ones that show expression on faces. My goal is to capture that expression in my painting. I love photos of interesting body compositions creating unique shapes too,” she says. “Individualism has been an area of interest to me my whole life and I am drawn towards uniqueness. I try to capture a person’s individual personality through my paintings.
Jenny Konz
THERAPEUTIC TALENT
THERAPEUTIC TALENTThe first time Jenny Konz picked up a pencil to draw with, was in 2009. She maintains there was never a 'plan’ to become an artist. She resorted to drawing to ease the ache in her heart from her daughter and granddaughter living so far away in America.
"I went over to America for the birth of my first grandchild as my son-in-law (GI Joe) was doing a tour in Iraq. It tore my heart in two when I had to leave this beautiful little bundle and come back home. His second tour was when she was two years old, and my daughter and granddaughter came to New Zealand for a holiday. I fell in love with this bundle of joy all over again and my heart seriously broke when they had to leave. I struggled to cope with the loss and decided to pick up a pencil and try to draw her from my favourite photo, thinking that it would be good therapy for me. I had my Aunt Margaret who lived in Christchurch who was an artist (Margaret Hudson-Ware) so I sent her my drawing for some feedback and this is what she said… "What a lovely drawing! You have caught the most important part of any drawing, which is the spirit of the work. Alex looks unsure, uncertain what is happening. Well done Jenny!!! The hair is very soft and babyish and wispy . . . good work here. Hands are a nightmare. These hands are very sweet and very young . . . good work again. (I think of them as a bunch of sausages). Lop-sided is real, too symmetrical often looks artificial - a bit of good work. Just keep going."
Wendy Ricketts
Compelled to paint and draw animals, especially their eyes, Wendy Ricketts tells us how she uses her artistic talent to focus and calm her busy mind while producing works for commission, family and friends.
Compelled to paint and draw animals, especially their eyes, Wendy Ricketts tells us how she uses her artistic talent to focus and calm her busy mind while producing works for commission, family and friends.I was first inspired to draw after seeing a study of a hare by German artist Albrecht Durer. I was taken by the detail and softness of the rendition. I love the faces of animals and the detail needed to produce them. I strive to produce it, sometimes to my detriment. You can get so caught up in the detail that you forget the result you were intending to achieve. Or the mood you were trying to show in the animal. Animal faces convey so much, especially the eyes. I have always loved the natural world and have a fascination with wildlife.
Julie Freeman
A self-taught artist, Julie Freeman has always loved art as a hobby. When she moved overseas after marriage in 1980, she was able to pursue her art while her husband Michael was completing a Masters in Product Design at the University of Illinois. She began doing animal portraits and some figurative work, which gradually progressed from black and white to colour. After living in the USA for eight years they transferred to the UK. Life was pretty busy with two young children but she persevered, mainly doing commissioned animal portraits, which became popular through word of mouth. Julie tells us of her journey from then through to winning the 2016 Unison Colour Cup at the PANZ ‘Purely Pastel’ National Awards in Mapua.
We returned to New Zealand at the end of 1993, and my primary focus was on the children, the home and part-time work in a local art shop. As the children got older I had a little more free time and started to focus on pastel as my preferred medium. My first exhibition was with two other professional artists, Merle Bishop and Joan Taylor, at A Fine Line Gallery in Matakana in December 2009 which was a turning point for me as an artist. My work for this exhibition covered a range of subjects, focusing on what I thought would be popular with the local residents and I successfully sold the majority of my work.
Andrew Carter
CHALLENGING COLOUR
CHALLENGING COLOUROil pastel artist Andrew Carter learned he was colour blind at the age of nine when he argued with his teacher over his choice of selecting yellow instead of green for the grass and red for the bark on the trees in a school painting.
It certainly didn’t put him off painting and drawing and why should it have? Some famous artists such as Constable, Picasso and van Gogh are thought to have been colour blind and they did well. It is, after all, a simple matter of perception, not skill or technique.
