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Rochelle Boult - Aotearoa Artist

Rochelle Boult

FREE SPIRIT

Watching unlimited possibilities unfold onto paper, Rochelle Boult’s free spirit finds itself at the tip of a sharpened pencil. Finding peace and relaxation within her mark making, she builds her line and tone gently, observing her drawing as it gradually grows in depth and detail using shading and clever use of the different softnesses of her medium.

Rochelle creates works with Faber-Castell thick Graphite on Bockingford Drawing paper. Starting with an HB which she uses to sketch the outline, she then moves through from a 2B for shading to a 6B and an 8B for final depth. Rochelle also does some printmaking including etching and woodcuts, which she has successfully sold in a Marlborough exhibition.

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Karen Taylor

karyntaylor-aotearoa-artistBorn an artist, Karen Patricia Taylor has always had a fascination with the human form which is often an integral element to her work. Driven by an intrinsic force where her creativity finds a happy balance within the flow of her artistic making, her work speaks of the feminine amongst a myriad of other creative explorations. Her early life was spent drawing and making, often copying faces from comics, “pages and pages of them” until this grew to include the human form.

By the time she was in her late 20’s she began to work with clay, primarily cut and altered slip cast objects. Slip cast objects are created when liquid clay (slip) is poured into plaster moulds and allowed to form a layer, the cast is left on the inside cavity of the mould and taken out and altered or added to as required.

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Julie Freeman

Julie Freeman - aotearoa artist

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.

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Alfred Memelink

Alfred Memelink - aotearoa artist

Within the delicate touch of watercolour, Alfred Memelink’s love and admiration of the sea is clearly visible. His joy and wonder in the environments he portrays are clear in the lightness and pleasure of his colour range and composition which emits a sense of satisfaction and contentment. With an easy brushstroke, one gets a feeling of comfort almost giving us permission to forgive nature its dark side with its wondrous and supple beauty. Even his stormy works have a feeling of softness and fragility, yet evoke inspiration.

Self taught, while at sea, his work was developed whilst sailing between New Zealand and Japan, working as a marine engineer. Giving credit to the Pacific Ocean and King Neptune, he began an artistic journey alongside the one he was already on. Having already had an early introduction with a childhood flavoured with artistic parents and wanting a hobby during his voyaging, watercolour was the practical decision to begin his artistic endeavours. A leisurely diversion from the practicalities of living, these early exercises and a book, ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’ led to the decision in 1994 to leave the sea to paint full time and get ready for his first solo exhibition in a local cafe.

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Robert van der Touw

robert-van-der-touw-aotearoa-artistTHE PASSION IN PATTERN

Robert van der Touw arrived in New Zealand in 1990 after graduating from the School of Natural medicine in Holland. He always had a strong love for the beauty of nature, even as a four year old boy when he used to wander the Dutch forest and steal flowers and plants out of people’s gardens to put in his own. The police were not amused but were very surprised at his age! “Is that Robert van der Touw” one of them laughed as he entered the room! Roger tells us more of his interest in nature and accomplishing his mission.

Shortly after my arrival here I fell in love (literally) with the native forests of New Zealand. As a practitioner of natural medicine, nature was my ‘playing ground’ and New Zealand’s pristine ancient forests could not provide for a better one. I developed a sincere desire to explore all these beautiful ‘new medicines’. As a trained classical homeopath I was lucky. Homeopathy offers effective research methods to let you explore these.

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Roger Shanks

Roger Shanks - aotearoa artist

HARNESSING THE BEAUTY

When Roger Shanks retired from a full time career in sheep and cattle farming, he became an artist, gaining knowledge from reading books and magazines and attending workshops with prominent Australian and New Zealand artists.

Having had no formal training, art filled a need to keep himself occupied during his retirement with the biggest motivating factor being the sense of achievement that comes from creating beautiful paintings. Roger retired at age 54. Eighteen years later, Roger is very proud of having had a private exhibition in Napier, two exhibitions in Gisborne and being a finalist in the Australian Artist magazine competition, Volume 203. He intends to continue on his artistic journey indefinitel

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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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Levin Adventure Park Mural

A huge colourful mural has transformed the wall at Levin Adventure Park’s northern border.

At a ceremony to celebrate the mural’s completion last Thursday, Horowhenua Deputy Mayor Garry Good described it as a 300 square-metre landmark piece of beautiful artwork. “From Council’s perspective, it’s the most amazing mural in New Zealand. You won’t see anything like it in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, anywhere. We’ve set a standard with this here in Horowhenua,” Mr Good said.

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