Kim Mitchell
FREE SPIRIT Rebelling about being told what and how to paint, and being a free spirit, travelling from place to place…
Estefania Mondaca
Born in Chile, South America, Estefania Mondaca is just starting on her artistic journey and we are pleased to introduce her work to you.
Estefania is currently studying for a Bachelors degree in Architectural Studies at ARA Canterbury. She has learned that all ways of creating achieve the same point, which is to create, whatever name you call it. Inspired by life itself, the things she sees that make her think or suprise her; she finds that in Chile the focus was on people, the human figure and a totally different landscape to New Zealand. Here she is inspired by the remarkable beauty of New Zealand’s terrain. “I normally go out and take photos, for example, the Heaphy Track on the West Coast, which was the first awakening for me to this beautiful country. I started to draw and paint what I saw. I think walking is a big inspiration for me, giving me an understanding of my feelings and perception of what I see.”
Dylan Keys
CREATIVE INTUITION
Self-taught artist Dylan Keys has been creating since he was a small child. “I always wanted to be a full-time artist but it was an unexpected series of events that led to it actually becoming a reality. Unfortunately, I’ve been in poor health for a number of years and one of the ways I cope with the pain and unpleasant sensations is to distract myself by drawing and painting.”
“A few years ago, I did a realistic charcoal drawing which caught the attention of leading motivational speaker Craig Harper, who is also a writer and educator in the areas of health, high performance and personal development. He shared my work with his online audience and I soon had a few commission enquiries coming in for charcoal portraits. Although my preferred style has always been a very loose and expressive one rather than realism, I decided to make the most of that momentum. I launched my website and social media pages soon after and I’m lucky enough to have been a full-time artist since.”
Karin McCombe Jones
THE ESSENCE OF COLOUR With a plethora of training in all sorts of artistic areas including art and design, dance,…
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…
Lizzy Dickie
CELEBRATIONS OF LIFE Born into a family of nine children, Lizzy Dickie has always been encouraged to pursue her creativity. Art…
Keeley Eastwood
EASTWOOD MYTHOLOGY Myths, legends and the other-worldly creatures that bring them to life have long caught the attention of young and…
Marc Mckinlay
Marc currently lives in Christchurch and has never had any formal training in art. He says his major interest in art stemmed from secondary school in Scotland, when he was selected to represent his school in regional art programmes.
Marc currently lives in Christchurch and has never had any formal training in art. He says his major interest in art stemmed from secondary school in Scotland, when he was selected to represent his school in regional art programmes.“I like to experiment with colour and find inspiration everywhere. I don’t focus on other artists’ work but the vibrant art scene in Christchurch has inspired me to create more art in the last 24 months than I did over the last twenty years. Due to this, my art has evolved significantly in the past 18 months and I am now considered to have evolved a style.”
Lucia Laubscher
Lucia Laubscher was born in South Africa and carved an impressive career there around her painting. She immigrated to New Zealand in 2017, and battled with the adjustment of living in a new country with a different culture and set of rules. She started building her career from scratch again and has done exceptionally well in those four years. She tells us her story
When I was five years old, my first grade teacher looked at a cartoon elephant I drew and exclaimed “You are an artist!” This stuck with me throughout my life and my love for creating grew stronger with every passing year. When I was 12 years old my parents ordered me my first oil painting kit in the mail and it arrived with four small canvasses and instructions on how to paint four different artworks – trees, buildings, still-life etc. I enjoyed drawing and experimenting with paint and have always been creative and would find myself doodling all the time.