Bernadette Ballantyne
WINDOWS TO THE SOUL Gaining her Bachelor of Fine Art at Whanganui Quay School of the Arts (now Whanganui UCOL) between…
Monique Tichborne
ARTISTIC ESCAPE Diagnosed in 2018 with Fibromyalgia and FND (Functional neurological disorder) Monique Tichborne bravely started to use art as a…
Livia Dias
CLASSIC BEAUTY Livia Dias is an artist who enjoys painting nature, gardens and people. Livia grew up in an environment surrounded…
Kim Mitchell
FREE SPIRIT Rebelling about being told what and how to paint, and being a free spirit, travelling from place to place…
Siobhan Demeester
MY HAPPY PLACE
MY HAPPY PLACEFrom the moment Siobhan Demeester opens her eyes in the morning and sees the sun hit the top of the gum trees outside her window, she just wants to put those colours onto canvas. “Everything I see I convert it into a painting. I take my camera with me everywhere I go and am constantly taking photos to paint. Then when I go to bed at night, I dream about painting…quite obsessive really.” Obsessive or not, the positive feedback she receives from people and the fact that when she paints, she is in a very happy place, motivates her as well as winning prizes, being commissioned and selling her work.
Born in England and sharing her time between Australia and New Zealand, Siobhan completed two years at Gold Coast Art School between 2011 and 2013. When she moved to Russell Island, she saw a notice on the board at the ferry terminal, advertising a workshop with New Zealand Master Pastelist, Maxine Thompson, which she promptly signed up for and has never regretted.
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…
Adair Davis
HOW COULD I NOT? Born into a creative family with parents who belonged to a vibrant arts community, Adair Davis tells…
Hiria Anderson
PAINTER OF LIGHT
Hiria Anderson prefers to be known simply as Hiria, a preference which reflects her shy and retiring nature. Brought up with her grandparents who were practitioners of Raranga (weaving) and Whakairo (carving) she grew up surrounded by creativity, loving drawing and making things with her hands.
“I’ve grown up around creatives so it was a natural transition for me to make art my career. As a young person I remember wanting to become an artist so I didn’t have to talk to people. I was fearful of having a job in front-of-house, reception, or serving in a shop. Anything to do with people I didn’t want to do. Well, I’ve come a long way in thinking from back then.”
UK ARTIST Amanda Bates
Trees prompted Amanda Bates’ move from palette knives and oil paint to pen and ink. “A particular group of beech trees at Avebury were responsible for this switch,” says British artist Amanda, who grew up in a house called Haere Mai, which she understands to mean ‘Welcome’ in Maori.
By Tim Saunders
“Growing on top of the henge (earthen bank), their intertwined roots have been exposed by soil erosion, caused by a combination of weathering and visitors feet. The resultant lattice is fascinatingly ornate and well beyond the scope of my knife work. Brushes didn’t seem to hold the answer either; the magic that I was reaching for didn’t seem to be present in a realistic depiction. I tried several approaches, including a diversion into a stylised use of colour that took on a life of its own for a while but it wasn’t until I reached back in time for my pen and its promise of crisply rendered detail, that I realised that colour itself might be the problem. It seems to be well known among photographers that a sharp monochrome photograph will show detail better than any colour photograph could. The reason for this has nothing to do with any inherent superiority of black and white film over colour; it holds true in digital photography. It is simply that colour distracts the eye from detail and it seems that our brains can only cope with so much visual information at a time.