Artistic Approach:

Painting is when I lose track of time, when I see the magic that is nature, the texture of a leaf, the richness of colour in a flower, the sparkling raindrop, the amazing structure of a plant. It is in the symbiotic balance with other plants, the endless shapes and then watching as a plain bud opens to reveal a flower of exquisite complexity.

I have always loved flowers and if I didn’t love plants, I couldn’t paint them with so much detail. The sheer beauty that nature can create will always fascinate me. Capturing this is the challenge, whether the full completeness of botanical illustration or the less exacting flower painting. I only started painting again in 2010 shortly before retirement, having not touched a paint brush since my teenage years.

The mediums I work in are polychromos pencil, watercolour or acrylic, depending on what I am painting, where I am, and the outcome I wish to achieve. If we were travelling and perched on the side of a very steep mountain, plant hunting, then the polychromos pencils were the tools of choice. Even they can roll away... as for trying to keep a container of water upright!!!

The smallness of so many of our native flowers means their unique beauty can be missed and I have a passion to create a portfolio of work showing these plants at actual size and with the flowers included “scaled up” to a size that will reveal their exquisite and unique shapes, structure, and colours.

Finally, my intense interest in Botanical Illustration is also driven by my nursing / health profession. The increasing resistance to modern drugs, and the struggle to find new ones, means, I believe, we need to go back to the plants. The original source of our medicines. We are losing so many species before they have even been assessed for their potential in medicine, is scary. But this is another story...

Affiliations:

Full member of Botanical Art Society of New Zealand
Member of Watercolour New Zealand
Member Pastel Artists of New Zealand

Education:

I do not have any qualifications, but my training has been the attendance of the annual 6 full-daytraining courses in New Plymouth run by Gillian Rankin for 10 years. Gillian has retired now but was a professional tutor in Brisbane and the artist for the Brisbane Herbarium. I was also mentored and tutored from 2010 until her death by Susan Worthington. We where close friends and because she was so constructive with her critique of my work, I learnt a lot from her.

I have attended many other courses run by professional tutors, in watercolour, acrylics and coloured pencil, learning more each time.

Exhibitions:

I had a painting accepted for the “Homework” Exhibition at Puke Ariki in New Plymouth in 2012.