Born in Petrovaradin in the former Yugoslavia, Vjekoslav Nemesh has been a professional working artist since 1984, participating in over 150 group and 30 solo exhibitions.
Married with three children, DeAnne travelled between Rotorua and Taupo over a four year period to complete her Diploma of Visual Art (Fine Art) in 2000 at the Waiariki Institute of Technology. Armed with this accomplishment, she managed to overcome her shyness and was able to present her work to galleries and buyers, resulting in her first solo exhibition in Tauranga and achieved first place in the prestigious Portage Ceramic Award in 2007.
Whangarei-born, John, whose very first painting was a self-portrait completed back in 1977, has had a long interest in art but says he ‘played around’ for years while in ‘corporate career mode’ here in New Zealand and in the USA. On returning to NZ in 2003 he says he became really serious about his own art while beginning with partner Mary, a modest collection of work by New Zealand artists.
Apart from the odd day class, Karen, who currently hails from Napier, says she has enjoyed several short courses with the likes of Krispin Korschen, Rua Longley, Marianne Muggeridge, Megan Schmidt, among others. “All fabulous artists,” she enthuses, “who have stretched my mind sideways, up and down and inside out, that is when they could catch up with my own train of thoughts.”
“I never had any formal are training and just blundered and blustered my way through,” she quips, adding that she did not enter the world of ‘art’ until she was 35: “It was New Year’s and my friend Julie asked what shall we do this year? Seeing as we’d both dabbled in writing and music I replied: ‘let’s be artists, and that was that.”
This ultimately resulted in a career with art as the baseline. “I have worked as a Graphic designer, Textile designer, even designing jeans at one stage as well as drawing up fashion shots for a retail outlet.
“Spending time at our whanau marae, and being taught by my elders about the carvings, paintings and weaving was my first education in art,” he reveals. “Seeing the intricacies of the skilled work and the meaning and pride associated with them, inspired me to want to do the same.”
Robyn Mitchell’s favourite sculptural medium is wood: “It is not until you start to shape and polish the wood, that the beauty of the grain and colour are revealed,” she says. “Because of the variants of grain, the type of wood and what part of the tree they come from, no two pieces will ever come out the same.”
This is the personal philosophy of Alan Waters who has been described as New Zealand’s answer to Rene Magritte, a Belgian painter and one of the leading figures of the Surrealist movement. In fact one of Alan’s favourite pieces of art is `Clairvoyance (Self Portrait) 1936’ by Magritte. He says this image was one of many that really excited him and started his career as a full-time artist 19 years ago.
DOODLEWOOD
“I call my work doodlewood because that’s what it is, literally doodling with wood”
Mark Jones’s organic sculptures are shaped by the wood he is working with: “I enjoy having the gift of being able to see an ordinary piece of wood and visualise it being a piece of art.”
Mark started at the Stevenson Brothers Rocking Horse Makers, UK, assembling wooden horses in the factory for a year when the opportunity to learn how to carve the horses arose.
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