• Wild Sea series

  • 2016

    I woke up one morning hearing the sound of the sea really roaring and pounding. I had to go and find out what was happening. A recent severe southerly storm, combined with king tides, had created enormous waves that were tearing and ripping up the coastline, flooding nearby paddocks and threatening industrial buildings near the shoreline. The power and wild beauty of the sea was exhilarating.

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  • Creation series

  • 2016

    Over many years, I’ve had the privilege of friendship with someone involved in research into the liver and how it acts as a sieve for the body’s essential functioning. Recently he showed me amazing electro-scanning microscopy photographs of the liver. And what especially caught my eye were the many forms that looked just like other aspects of our natural world – from earthly landscapes to cosmic nebulae. It made me realise that all living forms – in every unseen microscopic detail – are a part of a greater universe. We are all the same and interdependent. When we start interfering with this relationship, or things stop functioning as they should, the consequences can be catastrophic.

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  • Freedom series

  • 2016

    Today the media headlines are too often dominated by disaster, war and the outcomes of religious and political tyrannies.  So many people are struggling to live their lives in freedom. With art, freedom is possible – especially freedom of the mind. Clouds, in all their shifting airy forms, symbolize that freedom for me.

    One of these works, “Memories of Kathleen”, was done in fond recollection of an elderly friend, who once said to me, “When I die, just look out for the pink clouds – that’ll be me!”

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  • Moments of Truth series

  • 2016

    In mid-2016, I was asked by Italian curator and art mentor, Stefania Carrozzini, to participate in several group exhibitions in New York, Milan and London in late 2016 and early 2017. She was particularly interested in the series of paintings I had done in the 1980s – Children’s Games and Daze of our Lives. Carrozzini asked if I would consider a return to that theme, which fitted her concept for exhibitions entitled Moments of Truth (New York and Milan) and Nothing Is As it Seems (London). In her catalogue essay for the “Moments of Truth” exhibition, Carrozzini states:

    This exhibition wishes to make us reflect upon the moment of inspiration, that fleeting moment of the here and now, where all seems possible, where the imagination knows no bounds and opens up to infinite creative possibilities.

    The art of young children particularly fascinates me. They are not restricted by learnt conventions, but are free to express their feelings and observations of the world around them. Sometimes that world is imaginary - or at least, only they can see it!  I love the naïve images and carefree superimposition of scenarios – anything is possible in a child’s world.

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  • Unexpected World series

  • 2017

    As I began preparing works for my solo exhibition at the Aigantighe Art Gallery (Timaru) scheduled for September 2017, I realised that what I was painting, and much of what I had been creating since 2015, was my personal response to the series of devastating Christchurch and Canterbury earthquakes. These started on 4 September 2010 with a terrifying 7.1 magnitude shake, followed by numerous strong aftershocks for the next five months. On 22 February 2011 a shallow, magnitude 6.3 earthquake caused severe damage in Christchurch and Lyttelton, killing 185 people and injuring thousands. The aftershocks – some up to 6.4 magnitude - continued regularly for nearly three years. Intermittent strong aftershocks still occur.

    My world there, and of course most people’s, was turned upside down. A lot of what I loved was destroyed, including my home. But out of this came a lot of positive things including the way friends, family, total strangers banded together to give support to me and to each other. Eventually things were resolved for me, and I could move on. I decided to rebuild my life in Timaru and that has proved to be a good decision.

    We are frequently reminded that there are many forces that we humans don’t, and probably never will, control – hurricanes, landslides, floods, earthquakes. As well as nurturing and supporting us, the earth can unleash forces that destroy and cause chaos.

    To a certain extent we can anticipate these events, and prepare for them. However, we can never be fully prepared for the immediate and long-term impact – physical and mental - of events such as a major earthquake. But, somehow, we have to pick ourselves up and start again, often in a radically changed environment. Hence the title of this latest series – and the exhibition – “Unexpected World”.

    The Japanese ceramic artist, Satoru Hoshino, who lost his studio and all his work in a landslide in 1986, once said – and it expresses very well what I also try to do as an artist:

    “When a disaster occurs and a person is thrown out into chaos, he makes himself into a centre and creates a passage through the chaos. To deepen relationships, find meaning, and build new order….People try to construct order while the chaos of the universe keeps on endlessly undermining it. It is an endless struggle, but it is necessary to keep on constructing a passage.”

    These works reflect my struggles and passage through – and out of – chaos to a new order.

    As with my early works, and the 2016 “Moments of Truth” series, I have used many small pictorial motifs throughout my “Unexpected World” paintings. Poets and writers have favourite words; composers like to use certain musical phrases. So too with my motifs – they are part of my language as an artist. They reflect various aspects of my life, events that have occurred. They have particular meanings for me, and are not used randomly. Some images are quite recognisable – a cat, a house, a bird, a flower, some steps, a line of washing. I’m quite happy for viewers to interpret these motifs and others to discover a story of their own within my paintings.

    I decided to use several works from earlier series in my “Unexpected World” exhibition. Some from the 2016 “Moments of Truth” series (Which Way?, Warm Fuzzies, Big Bird, Fun Days, Little Bird, Party Time, Running Free, Springtime and Living the Dream) reflected my feelings and emotions during the aftermath of the quakes, especially during the initial euphoric period of a new life in Timaru. I also chose to include four paintings from the “Old Bag” series of 21 works created in 2015-16: Hogget Fleece, Kiwi Stamp, Blue Light Bag and Dags. In my art, I often explore the many challenges that women have to confront and overcome.  These challenges can be triggered by natural events such as earthquakes, fires or floods, but more often by relationship breakdowns, medical mishaps, financial and social constraints, or simply by age.  A rude comment, suggesting my ‘use by’ date had passed, originally inspired the “Old Bag” paintings. After trying several types of support for the paintings, I discovered old wool packs (fadges). Although they were a challenge to paint on, they are an integral part of the wool industry that has historically been a backbone of New Zealand’s economy and the symbolism of their original and continuing use was irresistible.  The discarded fadges seemed ideal canvases for a series of paintings about the amazing resilience and resourcefulness of women in particular. But in time I also came to see them as a metaphor for everyone who survives a disaster of some sort. Despite age, all sorts of mutilation, and disasters man-made or natural, we can continue to contribute to society. As survivors, we can express great joy in just being alive. I use a restricted palette of colours - a challenge in itself ­- to make each work individual, just as each of us is an individual with something to offer to the world.

    Another departure from more conventional supports for paintings was my use of small rocks, gathered from local beaches and painted with my small motifs. During the Christchurch earthquakes there were many rock falls - huge boulders were catapulted into the air and sent rolling down hillsides, killing people and destroying homes. We could hear the rocks cracking and grinding beneath our feet, deep in the earth. “Rock On” was intended as an interactive installation, in which visitors to the gallery were invited to rearrange the seven rocks within the frame.

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  • Woman series - 1

  • 2018

    I am currently exploring artistic depictions of women compared to the reality of our lives.

    I reference and question the (predominantly-male) artistic view of women either as objects of desire, ripe for exploitation, or as household goddesses, safely controlled and restricted by child-bearing, child-rearing and domestic ‘duties’. Picasso once said that women were “goddesses and doormats”. He was/is not alone in that attitude.

    Attempts to address or redress the issue have been “resolved” with violence, treated as a joke, met with comments such as “Get over it”, or simply ignored,. Sadly, for many women, change is slow or non-existent. They live, they reproduce and they die, unknown and unrecognised.

    I have incorporated archaic ritual female figurines associated with fertility and reproduction with some of the vocabulary of motifs – washing on a clothes line, scars and stitches, hearts, houses, stars and rain – that appeared in my recent Moments of Truth and Unexpected World series, as well as earlier paintings from the 1980s.

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  • Woman series - 2

  • 2018

    During this year, my “Woman” series has developed further, becoming more abstract. But, as American artist Joan Mitchell (1925-92) said, “All art is abstract. All music is abstract. But it’s all real…” I have long been concerned about the physical and mental violence endured by women, right across the board. It can be domestic or social violence, or “medical misadventure”. Then there is self-inflicted violence. This latter also includes cosmetic surgery, undergone in response to constant peer and social media pressure to conform to unrealistic expectations of female beauty.

    Violence may leave visible scars – the result of physical abuse, or botched surgery. Mental scarring is not so visible. In my “Old Bag” series (2015-16), I covered torn and stitched-up wool packs (fadges) with brightly-coloured paint and glitter to discuss how women hide or disguise their scars, pretending the violence is not happening.

    My “Woman” series is now exposing the cuts and slashes, as well as the stitches and patch-up jobs.

    Violence is not OK. These issues need to be brought into the open. Artists have a responsibility and a unique means to do this. As a woman artist who has not only observed, but also experienced physical and mental violence, I own that responsibility.

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