Michael Angelo Burke
HERITAGE ART A carver and painter of murals and pictures, portraying an individual style unique in New Zealand, Michael Angelo Burke’s…
Karen Vernon
UNDER A BENIGN SPIRIT
“My art doesn’t stand on words. What is on my canvas I sometimes can’t explain away with clever talk. It is not an intellectual process, my paintings are intuitive, and, I feel, painted under the tutelage of a benign spirit.” So says Karen Vernon whose journey into the art world began in 1993 while attending American Folk Art classes in Auckland.
Largely self-taught and without any formal art training Karen says she has been fortunate to have had the guidance of a number of “wonderful” art tutors to get to the level she is at today. “I was a student of Jayne Sprott, and attended her watercolour class for three years. It was at this point I developed a passion for art and began trying other mediums, but staying in the realms of more traditional realistic painting.
Keith Grinter
EXTREME ART
EXTREME ARTIt is not every day one meets an artist who ‘renounced’ the relatively calm aura of oil paints and easel for the fiery inferno of glassblowing, but it was enough to make Whangarei-based glass-artist Keith Grinter an irresistible subject for The New Zealand Artist Magazine. Photographs by Diana Rees.
Keith Grinter started work in his own glass blowing studio in Whangarei in September 2013. He recalls: “I had been discussing moving to Whangarei and working with Keith Mahy, (one of the founding fathers of art glass in New Zealand), when he unfortunately passed away.”
Jan Huijbers
THE CREATIVE MIND
A history buff, a fascination for new inventions and a keen gardener. During his life-long journey to establish himself as a full-time practicing artist, Jan Huijbers has been exposed to a myriad of different styles and influences. In the article below he talks about his life long journey as an artist.
I had no formal training but was involved in art at an early age. At age 16, I was a member of an art design team creating flower structure parades, a yearly event in Zundert Holland for many years.
Robert Rapson
FOCUS ON ROBERT RAPSON
Ceramic artist Robert Rapson, who has made the trophies for the annual Arts Access Awards for the past four years, has received one of his trophy creations: the Arts Access Artistic Achievement Award 2014.
Robert learned he was the recipient when he returned home to the Hutt Valley in late June after three months travelling in Europe and North America. The judging panel described Robert as a “clever, quirky and self-taught artist” and said the award acknowledges his “unique voice and contribution to New Zealand art.”
Vjekoslav Nemesh
UNIVERSAL LOVE
Inspired by nature and the outer reaches of the human soul, award winning artist Vjekoslav Nemesh says the overriding subject matter of all his work is quite simply universal love.
Born in Petrovaradin in the former Yugoslavia, Vjekoslav Nemesh has been a professional working artist since 1984, participating in over 150 group and 30 solo exhibitions.
Darina Cincurova
THE ART OF FREEDOM
A passionate environmental artist, Darina Cincurova, hopes her art will inspire a respect and appreciation of New Zealand's diverse wildlife heritage.
Born in the Czech Republic, Darina says art has been her ‘thing’ from early childhood when she started drawing the world around her and dreamed of becoming a full time artist. Little wonder then that as a student Darina abandoned fashion design opting instead to undertake a four-year art course at a private art school in Prague as this allowed her more freedom to express herself. It is this artistic freedom that has driven and inspired Darina all her life and what she loves most about being an artist. “I cannot imagine life without it,” she says simply.
Bari Duncan
A DRIVING FORCE
After trying various work prospects, such as clerical, retail,
bank and so on, Bari Duncan finally decided to follow her
lifelong passion. “Right from pre-school,” she reflects, “my mother couldn’t keep up with my lust for colouring-in books. I have always longed to follow my heart and get focused on my painting. I just kept pushing, struggling, learning and trying until the time was right.”
Having been dealt a number of blows on her journey, Bari reflects, “My art is everything to me, it’s who I am, a driving force. I love that it has helped me through the hardest, roughest times in my life and when it seemed everything around was crumbling, it kept me focused and positive.” On the subject of education, she has not attended art school or university.
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.”