Sorting white from white
WHICH WHITE IS WHICH Some would say that the most important colour choice artists make is the white they choose to…
Online Galleries
Over the last 25 years the growth of Internet and the social media have irrevocably changed the face of the modern…
Artists Easels
A GUIDE TO EASELS A decent studio easel is a long term investment, and should offer you stability and flexibility. You…
Giclée Printing
GOING GICLÉE Giclée (pronounced zeeclay) art prints produced by artists in New Zealand are becoming increasingly popular and more widely available…
Packing for Post
HOW DO YOU ENSURE YOUR PRECIOUS CREATIONS WILL REACH THEIR DESTINATION UNHARMED? Shipping your artwork can be a stressful process no…
Time for a Spring Clean
CLEANING YOUR STUDIO Time to sort out, clear out and clean away those cobwebs and face a new season. You can…
Mehrdad Tahan
KNOW YOURSELF
From an early age Mehrdad Tahan had an interest in drawing and studied techniques used by the Old Masters. By the age of twenty, he had established his first studio where he taught drawing and calligraphy as well as exhibiting his own works.
In 1990 Mehrdad left Iran for New Zealand, which resulted in a pause in art while he improved his English and learnt about our culture. Family reasons dictated a move to Sweden, and a new culture and language to learn. 1999 saw Mehrdad return to New Zealand and settle in Christchurch.
Kathryn Millard
THE INNER ARTIST
It is an intense and intimate relationship and interaction with the world around her that feeds Kathryn Millard’s artistic soul.
“My life is about energy, rhythm and sensation, and translating that into a piece of art,” she declares. “It is about inventing the perfect technique, my own unique language for my response to nature. It is the experience of what I see happening all around me that stimulates me and gets me going, not the thing itself, that is the underlying subject of my work.”
Pauline Allomes
THE FINER DETAIL
A strong interest in art as a child did not hold much sway in the early 1960s when women did not go to art school and were expected to become nurses or secretaries, get married young and stay at home to look after the children.
Pauline Allomes was 50 before she was free to follow a desire that had been with her all her life and enrol at art school. “Through the years of raising children I had a strong interest in fibre and on entering art school thought I would become a fibre artist,” Pauline says, “this changed the minute I discovered paint, pastel, pen and ink.”
John Hodgson
THE LIVING ARTIST
After many years of working in the corporate world, John Hodgson completed a long transition to full time artist with his first solo exhibition at the Depot ArtSpace in Devonport in April this year. Representing seven years of work, a good number of the pieces on show sold over the two weeks of the exhibition which also saw some 600 visitors to the gallery.
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.