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Jo Rankin

jo-rankin-aotearoa-artistABSTRACT BALANCE

Formal training began for Jo Rankin when she graduated from the two year Nanette Cameron Interior Design School Auckland in 2008. Included in the training subjects were colour harmony, balance, styling and art history which also sparked her interest in painting and becoming an artist.

Moving to Kinloch in 2010, Jo joined a watercolour group in her local community. At the same time she joined Active Arts Taupō where she went every week to paint. “I had a great time there, being encouraged by other artists and making new friends.” Semi-retirement allowed her the time to explore her artistic dreams. “Loving colour and design led me to begin my journey as an artist. I have always been a voracious reader and love my collection of art books where I constantly find inspiration. Also our beautiful country and scenery fires my creative soul each day.”

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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.”

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Toni Tittleton

toni-tittleton-aotearoa-artistREFLECTIVE SCULPTING

Having always been creative and taking as many art classes as she could at school, but knowing nothing about glass casting, Toni Tittleton studied glass production and design at Whanganui Glass School, graduating with a diploma in 2012 and specialising in cast and kiln formed glass.

Pleased to have completed her diploma by the age of 20, once she had completed her studies she had to think outside the box – “I was challenged with the question all students face - what now? My goal was to create art for a living, however. I had no money for materials or to set up a studio.”

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UK ARTIST Danny Mooney

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When drawing people you would think it might help to actually remember their faces… What if you can’t remember them? British artist Danny Mooney suffers from facial blindness but finds that he can overcome this obstacle by focussing on other aspects of a person’s character, an approach that lends itself to caricatures.

“I can draw recognisable people with just a few lines without any real trouble,” he reveals. “I’ve been doing political cartoons. They’re an expression of my annoyance.  Cartoons are caricatures really. Say I’m doing a cartoon of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson… I can do the shape and the way he stands without too much effort. I look at a couple of other people’s cartoons of him and see that they all have little piggy eyes and droopy eyelids. For me the thing that makes Boris look like Boris is the hair, the round face, the fat body and the shabby suit. It doesn’t really need any additional features. That cartoon could be Donald trump or Boris Johnson. In order to produce political cartoons you have to stay abreast of the news but in order to stay sane you have to not stay abreast of the news! It’s a difficult tight rope to walk. I have always recognised people by their shape, the way they move, the way they walk, rather than by their faces. If I’m painting someone then those are the characteristics that are most important to me.”

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Ken Tanner

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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.”

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Dylan Keys

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CREATIVE INTUITION

Self-taught artist Dylan Keys has been creating since he was a small child. “I always wanted to be a full-time artist but it was an unexpected series of events that led to it actually becoming a reality. Unfortunately, I’ve been in poor health for a number of years and one of the ways I cope with the pain and unpleasant sensations is to distract myself by drawing and painting.”

“A few years ago, I did a realistic charcoal drawing which caught the attention of leading motivational speaker Craig Harper, who is also a writer and educator in the areas of health, high performance and personal development. He shared my work with his online audience and I soon had a few commission enquiries coming in for charcoal portraits. Although my preferred style has always been a very loose and expressive one rather than realism, I decided to make the most of that momentum. I launched my website and social media pages soon after and I’m lucky enough to have been a full-time artist since.”

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Vjekoslav Nemesh 2022

Vjekoslav Nemesh - Aotearoa Artist - The New Zealand Artists Magazine

NEMESH

Artist Nemesh Vjekoslav, hailing originally from former Yugoslavia (now Serbia), has developed his own unique style of painting, calling it semi-abstract. His work is vibrant, colourful and representative of a prolific connection to spirituality.

Demonstrating exceptional drawing skills from early childhood, his main interest was drawing comics. “However, that changed in my early 20s when a schoolmate commissioned me to create a large oil painting. This commission progressed into a more detailed and graphic representation of my artistic style.”

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Brenda Liddiard

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LYRICAL FLOW

Being involved in the arts as a songwriter, singer and musician for most of her life, Brenda Liddiard became interested in painting around 2000. A big influence and inspiration in this discipline was her late brother, Chris Liddiard, who was a watercolour artist based in the UK. Brenda and her brother were born in Essex in the UK, Brenda now living in Auckland, New Zealand.

With her brother's influence, Brenda started her painting career using watercolours. She attended many workshops and summer schools with well respected tutors including Allie Eagle, Cushla Parekowhai, Jane Zusters, James Lawrence, Sue Daly, Maree Wilson, Phillipa Blair and Brett A’Court. “At age 50, finding a new creative path was very exciting for me, it opened up a whole new world. I wanted to pursue the learning for as long as possible and realised this was something I could do as I grew older.”

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