Why Print?
WHY PRINT? By John Botton You push your chair back from your workstation and admire your handiwork. “Another masterpiece and in…
Reka Norman
REKA NORMAN
REKA NORMANStraight ‘A’ student, sixteen year-old Reka Norman has always enjoyed drawing, ever since childhood, for her it is a hobby.
Reka takes her hobbies seriously and to end her high school year with a 95% pass rate for her final International Cambridge Art Exam is a notable demonstration of this.
Honor Hamlet
HONOR HAMLET
HONOR HAMLETHonor Hamlet, a student at Haunui College, Whangarei, completed her high-school career by achieving the best marks in the world while her friend and fellow art student Reka Norman came in with an outstanding 95% pass.
Honor, (17) who only took up art seriously in her last two years of high school, is now a full-time student at Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland.
Jason King
MAGICAL INGREDIENT
Award winning landscape artist Jason King, a part-time fire engineer with penchant for making and flying model gliders, had always envied people who could draw or paint realistic pictures and never imagined he would be able to do it himself until one day he decided to give it a try. In this article he charts his course from the sketchpad to the winners podium.
When I first tried my hand at drawing I discovered that drawing ability is not necessarily an innate skill or ability, but rather something that can be learned. I found that there are techniques that can be used to create an image and, for me, the most important skill was developing an eye for what looks good.
Gavin Chai
THE PRODIGY
At the relatively young age of 17 years, Malaysian-born portrait artist Gavin Chai will hold his first solo exhibition at the Estuary Arts Centre in Orewa in May this year. This follows outstanding achievements in winning both KG Fraser award (best in show) and the gold medal (most successful artist of the show) at the 2014 Royal Easter Show. Gavin also had a painting selected as a finalist in the 2014 Adam Portraiture Award and placed with the nation-wide touring exhibition. In this article Gavin tells how the work of the old masters inspired him to create and pursue a career as a professional artist.
I started drawing and painting when I was 12 years old and trained under an artist in Malaysia where many materials such as oil paints and acrylics are in short supply. I was only taught how to use pencil, watercolour and oil pastels.
Anne Michelle Johal
THE ART OF ILLUSTRATION
My entire family are passionate readers, creatives, entrepreneurs, and story tellers. My father, a farmer, collected humorous books with illustrations full of wonderful little stories that tickled, and he taught us how to draw cartoons as a child. Beatrix Potter’s little handheld books, with her delicious little watercolour paintings, were read to us by our grandmother. Dad’s books included those written and illustrated by A.S. Paterson, the Andy Capp series, and many others. The coloured line illustrations and stories of Asterix and Obelix, the black and white cartoons of Murray Ball, The What a Mess collection by Frank Muir with Joseph Wright’s wonderful illustrations, Quentin Blake’s work, among others, became part of our favourite collections growing up.
A passionate reader, from a very young age, I lived inside these books as movies in my imagination. The narratives of people and places, emotion and experience captured and transported me out into the world of cultural difference and exciting possibilities, such a contrast to the farm life.
Claudia Recorean
CONTEMPORARY EXHIBITIONIST
CONTEMPORARY EXHIBITIONISTClaudia Recorean has been exhibiting her contemporary artwork in far-flung locations such as Germany and Mongolia and more recently right here in New Zealand. Here she tracks her career from the start.
The start of my artist career was marked, when I was ten years old and my grandfather sent me out to burn the rubbish. Watching the flames melt plastic into fluids and turning objects into new shapes initiated along lasting fascination with material transformation and the wish to spin straw into gold.
Bruce Mortimer
GRAPHIC DETAIL
GRAPHIC DETAILA life-long artist with no formal art training, graphite photo-realist, Bruce Mortimer, whose work has been sold all over the world, describes himself as a ‘self-learner’. He takes his art very seriously, committing himself to learning with a passion and working to a plan. This applies equally from his art and photography, to learning languages or sport. In this article he writes at length about his life as an artist and his quest to find peace and a sense of value in an increasingly frenetic global village.
My interest in art began at school, and I have practiced it in one form or another ever since. Although I enjoyed art at school and was competent even at that stage with pencil drawing, I developed a genuine love of photography in my early teens that I still have. Even then I approached my photography as an artist, in that I photographed subject matter in my own way and which had meaning for me.
Alan Williams
OUTLAW ARTIST There has always been something indefinable about motorcycling and motorbikes. Perhaps it is the independent nature of man and…
John Unasa
CONSUMED BY PASSION
After many years of focusing on various career paths John Unasa recalls that it was becoming quite apparent his desire to create from a very young age was still very much alive and something had to be done about it. Now, at 35, full of life experience, qualifications and a range of skills, he says he feels the time is right for him to put his full focus into his creative passion.
“My inspirations emanate from my feelings about my physical and social environment, my mood, my imagination, my culture, pop culture and my education,” he says.