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Rachel Barber

rachel-barber-aotearoa-artistLOCKDOWN LIMBO REVERSED

Rachel Barber is an inspiration to us all. With her enthusiasm, self-discipline and drive she took the economic and psychological impact of a COVID19 lockdown job and home loss, and turned the situation around into an opportunity for artistic growth and self-employment. And what an opportunity she created! Rachel tells us about it . . .

After I left school, I studied Digital Photography at Raffles College of Design. I have always been an artist, but I always worked as well. I was in such limbo when lockdown happened, I had lost all my work overnight due to COVID and moved out of my flat the day of lockdown. So, I was really faced with the reality of a ‘blank canvas’ in my life. I just knew I wanted to paint every day, that it was my dream job and my passion. So, the biggest flex was just saying to myself – I’m going to do this thing! I came to the realisation “I literally have nothing to lose right now.

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Claire Wallwork

 

claire-wallwork-aotearoa-artistCONQUERING DOUBTS

As a young woman and throughout her life, whenever Claire Wallwork thought of her dream career, she saw herself as an artist creating beautiful works and loving it,and yet she never really imagined that it was something that could actually eventuate. Three years ago, she had a catharsis where she asked herself,’what is holding me back?’ When she realised that the only thing stopping her were her own self-imposed limitations, she began to pursue her dream in earnest. ‘From that moment I replaced my student paints for professional ones and dedicated all my time and resources into mastering my craft and stepping up to the challenge’.

I am self-taught and have learnt through a huge amount of experimentation, asking a lot of questions and through watching YouTube Videos to familiarise myself with various mediums and techniques. To describe the theme that has permeated every aspect and stage of my life, it has been the challenge of self-expression. As a child I was cripplingly shy, and it took many years to find my voice, and even more to be able to express it eloquently. I eventually found writing really supported me in that but then I discovered painting. After a lifetime of soul-searching and healing, I discovered that painting allowed me access to the feelings and thoughts that sat under the surface of my conscious awareness.

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Wendy Leach - Aotearoa Artists - The New Zealand Artists Magazine

Wendy Leach

 

wendy-leach-aotearoa-artistThree years at Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland University (Diploma of Fine Arts) and two years at Whitecliffe College of Art and Design (Master of Fine Arts, 1st class honours) has seen Wendy Leach through to a fine career in visual arts. She tells us her of her process and progress.

I went to Elam when I left school, then trained as a secondary teacher. I became an art teacher first, then an exhibiting artist later. In terms of a philosophy that drives my creative soul, that would be the language and understanding of the power of opposites, yin and yang. These complementary opposites - dark and light, black and white, night and day, warm and cool, storm and calm - are fundamental to my current paintings as I explore the natural elements around me.

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Hollie Almond

 

hollie-almond-aotearoa-artistLYRICAL ABSTRACTIONS

By Cindy Kent-Woest

Hollie Almond lets her art become what it wants to be – surfaces saturated with storms of smouldering and dizzying colour. Colour moving and separating, guided by a light touch when needed; becoming beautiful while finding itself. Much like her own journey.

“I became an artist to help myself and to hopefully inspire others to see that art can help them help themselves too. It was my dream job as a child. To turn that into reality, and make my inner child proud for not giving up (even though I lost my way for a while), is probably my biggest motivator. 

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Sue Currie - Aotearoa Artist

Sue Currie

Sue Currie - Aotearoa Artist

Sue Currie was delighted to find that a comprehensive Australian correspondence course in graphic design for three years while at high school in Christchurch was a successful background for working in art. “In those days there were few opportunities for women to be taken seriously. In Sydney, Australia, the attitude was much more positive.”

Sue also took lessons with artist and illustrator Arthur Renshaw, (a retired tutor from the NSW Polytech), twice a week for six months as well as working freelance in graphic design. After six years she returned to New Zealand to paint, attending weekend workshops with a few fellow artists.

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Yasmin Yussof

Yasmin Yussof - Aotearoa Artist

GLOBAL GIRL

My name is Yasmin Yussof. I was born in Germany of Swiss-Malaysian parentage. I have been an Australian citizen, lived around the world and now, I am a permanent resident of New Zealand. Someone once called me ‘Global Girl’ as I never lived anywhere for more than two years, and was born to parents from different ends of the world.

My father was an Ambassador so I have lived in Singapore, Germany, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, India, Iran and Rome. Travelling all over the world as a child I attended mainly international schools. From when I was young, I have always been a tactile person, never knowing I wanted to be an artist, it just happened. I always creating something, just a doodler and needing to keep my hands busy. Never thinking anything of it, just did it. If one has a calling, whatever the profession, you can’t help but go in that direction.

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Kristin Ivill

Kristin Ivill

JOINING THE DOTS

Written and photographed by John Botton.

I first met Kristin Ivill when she breezed into my studio clutching a portfolio folder full of artworks she wanted to get copied and printed. While pouring over her work, it took me some time to realise that the exquisite images were made of thousands of dots, dots of all shapes, dots of all sizes, dots of all hues. My only point of reference was to imagine that the dots were like pixels in a photograph. I went along to Kristin’s studio to see if she was indeed going dotty.

JB: “Give me a little background to your beginnings in art and your training?”

“I’ve always loved art. My mother was arty and my grandmother was quite crafty. She spun wool. She dyed wool and wove fabrics. My grandmother would take me around the farm and we’d go hunting for birds and bugs and look at the trees and she would tell me all about the native fauna and flora. So that’s where my love of birds and nature stems from. I did art at school until year eleven when my art teacher told me to give it up. She said I had no talent. So I stopped doing it and focused on art history in year twelve which I loved. That’s where I was exposed to Seurat who did pointillism. But that was the end of that so I left art and got married and had children. When my daughter was born I did a bit of painting again because we needed some art to fill the walls. I got some canvases and paint and just started painting and it went from there.”

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Catherine Dunn

mug-shot-catherine-dunn-aotearoa-artistI don’t remember a time when I didn’t make art. It has been with me from the beginning. One of my earliest memories of being given an opportunity to paint was on my first day at kindergarten. It was a momentous discovery at the time for me and I didn’t want to do anything else.

Art was always a favourite subject at school, which led me to study art fulltime in Australia. I attended Claremont School of Art in Perth, Western Australia in the early 90s and graduated after three years, majoring in Sculpture. It was a lifetime ago and a valuable experience, fraught with all the learning curves of youth of course, but definitely provided a solid base to build on, and great memories. After Art school in my 20s I meandered through the creative process a bit, mostly in a sleep deprived fog, due to the addition of a husband and children. I always tried to keep my hand in while running a busy household and raising a family and continued to exhibit in Australia and in New Zealand, but it is only now that two out of three of my children are out into the world and doing their own thing, and my husband has miraculously morphed into a fulltime Picture Framer, that I have the opportunity to really work as a fulltime artist.

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Jill White

jill-white-aotearoa-artistFINDING THE SECRETS

I have had no formal art training but I come from a family of art lovers so I always say it must have been through a process of ‘osmosis’ that I learnt to work with colour.  Being surrounded by art in the home must have had some subconscious influence. My sister Loy Forrest was the artist in the family so until I came to New Zealand from Botswana, it wasn’t something I had considered doing.

Once I asked a friend’s daughter to do a painting for me but she was too busy so I thought I would try to do one myself. Another wonderful friend of mine Raewyn Coker saw it and took it into the local community gallery where it sold in the first week - they asked me to bring more work in to which I replied “but I’m not an artist and I don’t think I can”. However, I gave it a go and when that one sold, my career as an artist took off. Once I started painting I couldn’t stop, finding a need to create.

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Drew Hill

CONTEMPORARY VIEWPOINT

'Meat on Meat'

Using his camera to tell the stories of those who fall through the cracks, Drew Hill ventures to highlight political, social and cultural injustices and issues. He has been passionate about art from an early age and began by using painting as a medium to express his world view.

Drew loves art history and the biographies on artists - how they lived and worked. In 1999 he graduated from Ilam School of Fine Arts, Canterbury and now draws inspiration from current issues, producing thought provoking images through his recently favoured medium, photography, “...because a picture tells a thousand words and it enables you to capture the perfect moment in time that will never be seen again.”

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