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The Kapiti Arts Trail kicks off again Saturday morning 5 November 2022 and with me still in between houses and studios I’m again exhibiting as an ‘Artist in Own Studio’ but located at Artel Gallery in Otaki. This year instead of painting just smaller canvases on a trestle table and hanging the finished ones on the walls, my big old easel has been set up and I have four or five bigger unfinished paintings in situ to work on as well . . . although disgracefully dripping paint and turps off the canvases onto the carpet is not permitted apparently!

The new painting below on the left measures 1800mm x 1200mm and is just an underlayer. As a guide the painting on the right was finished and sold some years ago but can be used as an example of what the new one is more likely to look like when the multi-layering is finished and the painting complete.

For a bit of fun a few of these big ‘work-in progress’ paintings are being offered for sale during the two Arts Trail weekends (and in between) at a significantly lesser price than their finished counterparts. So it’s a bit like a lucky dip – take the risk and reap the rewards of buying an unfinished painting and hopefully be delighted when you eventually take possession of the finished product.

Of course there are also several finished paintings available at Artel from tomorrow to choose from – below find Beyond The Drift III on the left and Adrift II on the right. Both these are 1000mm x 1000mm and finished!

Look forward to seeing you at Artel Gallery in Otaki sometime over the next 10 days!

YOU ARE INVITED . . .

To join the artist Bee Doughty Pratt for a glass of wine

Tuesday 4th October 6pm – 8pm at ArtSelect Gallery Osborne Street Auckland

For the Opening of INSIDE OUT Solo Exhibition – see you there!

Weathering The Storm

Beyond: The Bay Of Islands

The Gap: Bay of Islands

It is time to pack the back of the VW van (very carefully) with paintings and deliver them to ArtSelect Gallery in Auckland city. Its a long drive from the Kapiti Coast but will be a nice break after the serious commitment I’ve been making to painting EVERY day for weeks to get enough work finished. Still a few paintings not quite done but getting there. One big painting is actually going to have the finishing touches done up in the big smoke and be hung to dry on the wall at ArtSelect . . . now that is cutting it fine to a dead-line!

The Exhibition Opening Night is Tuesday 4th October so do come and enjoy a glass of wine with us all at the ArtSelect Gallery at 19a Osborne Street Newmarket Auckland 1023 from 6pm – 8pm. Here is a preview of two of the new 1200 x 1200mm works on offer . . . The Gap: Bay Of Islands on the left and Beyond: The Bay Of Islands on the right. All other works have now been posted on my website in the Available Now Gallery and are also now on the Exhibitions page at www.artselect.gallery as well.

Represented in New Zealand by . . .

ArtSelect Gallery Newmarket Auckland

Art Matakana Gallery Matakana North Auckland

The Art Lounge Tauranga

Tennyson Gallery Napier

Artel Gallery Kapiti Coast

The Art Shop Gallery Christchurch

And ‘Elected Artist‘ with the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in Wellington

The various Art Shows which run so successfully in our main centres have been a moving target over the last few years with postponements and cancellations due to Covid rife. Sometimes the Shows have gone on-line and surprisingly OK results have been achieved for some this way. However nothing substitutes for the excitement of the real thing, the buzz of the monster opening nights, the hyperactivity of so many art-collectors in the same place at the same time and of course being able to meet and talk to the buyers of your work.

The not-to-be-missed NZ Art Show in Wellington is held on Queens Birthday weekend in June each year and overall sales in 2022 again topped $2million dollars. Here I am a bit bedraggled in the rain starting the load-in process with the bigger paintings still in the trusty vee-dub you can see reflected in the window. I didn’t quite sell out but came very close with just three paintings left by the time we all packed up on Sunday evening. The ‘wall’ I was allocated was in a great position and it was a pleasure to have previous clients stop to say hello (or in some cases buy another painting) and special too to catch up with all the other artists who travel from all over New Zealand to participate.

The 2022 Christchurch Art Show was held several weeks later at the magnificent new Te Pau Event Centre right in the centre of mostly re-built Christchurch which is at last transforming from a sad and sorry earthquake zone to a beautiful up-market city. My ‘wall’ in Christchurch was also in a great position and again a virtual sell-out with only one large painting and a couple of tinies left at the end of the Show. Very rewarding to participate again in the live shows after all the Covid disruptions we have had to persevere through.

In the meantime I missed out on both the major Auckland Art Shows in 2022 because of date changes and conflicting commitments but do have a Solo Exhibition ‘Inside Out’ coming up at ArtSelect Gallery in Newmarket Auckland and currently painting in a very dedicated way (like seven days a week!) to ensure I have enough large and small work available for opening night on Tuesday 4th October.

Mark this in your diary!

More about this exhibition in my next blog post.

Painting outdoors is not really my thing – although I can still remember trekking out with my box of paints and a small easel to a few picturesque river sites in the Manawatu way back when – I think I was only about eighteen! Nothing very constructive came from these outdoor excursions if you exclude the relaxing riverbank picnics with my ‘driver’ and eventual husband. Most of the small paintings I started were discarded or painted over some time later.

These days en plein air creativity has a lot more to do with landscaping the one hectare ‘building site’ we are currently living on, in temporary accommodation. With Covid overload and Construction supply line delays now endemic to our rather relaxed and alternative lifestyle, we are rapt that at least our ‘green fingers’ can still be put to good use outdoors. Not using Phthalo, Veridian or Olive green oil-paints on canvas but rather working with the naturally verdant greens of the thriving Corokia, Ngaio, Pseudopanax and Puka we are nurturing through the very hot and humid weeks of summer we have being having here in Peka Peka on the Kapiti Coast.

In the meantime most of my canvases are too big to take out on site now. I’m just starting two outsize commission paintings which always look rather intimidating until the mark-making starts. The smaller, long skinny painting on the right . . . Sundowner is nearly finished.

And whenever I take a day off painting – the hands-on landscaping of our outsized sand-dune will always provide for plenty of en plein air creative scope.

Represented in New Zealand by . . .

ArtSelect Gallery Newmarket Auckland

Art Matakana Gallery Matakana North Auckland

The Art Lounge Tauranga

Tennyson Gallery Napier

Artel Gallery Kapiti Coast

The Art Shop Gallery Christchurch

And ‘Elected Artist‘ with the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in Wellington

It’s taken a while but this large commission Slipstream Tides II is now finished and what a great way to start the New Year finishing such an exciting project. The brief included hot pinks for the island, some paler tides, some deeper jewel colours emerging from the mist and plenty of murky smudging and it does look magnificent on the deep charcoal wall in the buyers’ entrance foyer. (Not this image obviously.) The clients called it ‘delicious’ (reminded them of liquorice all-sorts I think) which is a first for one of my paintings.

Then onto the painting below which is called the The Detritus Beneath – just finished (rather obvious I’m on a pink binge at the moment) ; not yet exhibited but is available for purchase. Detritus measures 1600mm x 1000mm and buying details are shown in the Available Now Gallery on my website. While there, please do check out the image showing this painting room-hung.

And MORE pink in Coastal Shadows below – this time the palette is a little quieter, a little cooler too and it was enjoyable painting the misty subtleties involved on a smaller scale. This one at 1400mm x 450mm is a good ‘over the bedhead’ size and buying details are also shown in the Available Now Gallery – and a room-hung image is showing there too.

Now working every day on completing other outstanding commissions and painting also for exhibitions in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland – skiving off occasionally to work outside in this wonderful weather on our developing lifestyle block and building site . . . although the actual building has not started yet. Three massive tanks are due to be buried high up on our building platform this week though so that’s a good start. Never enough hours in the day!

Represented in New Zealand by . . .

ArtSelect Gallery Newmarket Auckland

Art Matakana Gallery North Auckland

The Art Lounge Tauranga

Tennyson Gallery Napier

Artel Gallery Kapiti Coast

And ‘Elected Artist‘ with the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in Wellington.

It’s that time of year again and what a year it has been with plenty of art exhibitions and art shows (and lots of other events of course) moved on-line or cancelled or being held with social distancing and mask-wearing now almost the norm throughout the country. This hasn’t stopped the purchasing of art with many artists and galleries reporting record sales during these trying times. The November Arts Trail on the Kapiti Coast was one of these successes – with me painting a mini-collection of tiny canvases for two weekends (in the window of Artel Gallery) and chatting to Trail visitors while selling some of the larger ones being exhibited on the adjacent walls. Conversations were somewhat muffled and I wasn’t wearing my usual bandana either!

Now finished and framed the minis have found their way into some of the other galleries I am represented by. Now 2022 beckons with several art shows and a couple of solo exhibitions being planned with fingers crossed these won’t be cancelled or postponed. With a number of larger commissions also yet to be completed this is going to add up to a very busy time painting over the next twelve months. So here is a very Happy New Year to me and mine and a very Happy New Year to you and yours!!

Currently represented in New Zealand by

ArtSelect Gallery Newmarket Auckland

Art Matakana Matakana North Auckland

Tennyson Gallery Napier

Artel Gallery Kapiti Coast

and ‘Elected Artist’ with the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in Wellington

Yes I’ve been busy painting nearly every day in the big old shed I’m using as a studio. You can see the rather disgraceful mess here for yourselves. With the further postponement of the Auckland Art Show until December at best and the Covid situation up there currently, very few of my paintings have travelled north recently. This has benefitted my exhibition at the Artel Gallery in Otaki which will run for the duration of the Kapiti Arts Trail which kicks off this coming weekend 6/7 and continues through to 13/14 November.

If you are within driving distance, come check out the paintings hung – open every day from the 6th to the 14th and perhaps join us for a glass of wine after 4pm on the weekends. In the meantime see also the advance images of the paintings on my website in the Available Gallery and on Artel’s website as well at www.artel.net.

And if you have ever wanted to know why I am usually seen with a bandana around my hair it’s not only to keep those hanging locks out of my eyes but also to stop me running my oil-painty hands through my hair because a few hours later, the only way to get the paint out is to CUT it out. Not a good look. The painting shown below ‘Flare For Matariki’ is now finished and already up on the wall at Artel.

I have been posting on two Blogs – a personal one and my arty one and have decided to streamline my efforts by combining the two. Most of my blogging time has been spent writing rather facetiously about Growing Old Disgracefully – rather than expounding more seriously about my art and the travails of exhibiting regularly. But now I’m combining the two approaches on this site – perhaps you may get a good non-arty laugh, at my expense, every now and then.

The Auckland Art Show scheduled for this month September has now been postponed until November with Opening Night – at The Cloud in downtown Auckland – planned for Thursday 11 November and then the show running for the following three days Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Auckland’s lockdown should be over by then, fingers crossed and the anticipated horde of art collectors will have free reign with the huge and diverse range of art available. The nine paintings below are all different sizes and prices and I’m keeping them aside for the Show and hoping to have at least another nine big ones finished by the time the Show opens.

Now painting in lockdown of course in a very limited space at home as I’m not meant to be driving to the usual industrial shed I use to paint multiple big canvases at once. Just as well I have some supplies at home. Painting on the left still at the under-layering stage and painting on the right shown finished and hung in an online ‘room’.

The New Zealand Art Show in Wellington on Queens Birthday Weekend 2021 was a rip-roaring success on all possible measures with more than NZ$2 million dollars worth of art sold between Thursday and Sunday. The Gala Evening was sold out, previews were sold out and many artists even sold out. I didn’t sell out but very pleased with all the sales I made – even took one 2m long painting out to the Hutt one night and hung this for the happy buyer. And now working on a number of large commissions that came in afterwards. The pent-up demand for life-enhancing artworks was certainly released after Covid had cancelled most live art shows in 2020. Here I am in front of my allocated four metres of blank wall about to hang selected paintings. Now looking forward to participating in 2022.

At our Peka Peka Base Camp this year we can report that the newly-planted Pohutukawa trees just outside the window are in full bloom with tui regularly feeding on the nectar of these iconic ‘land-of-the-long-white-cloud’ Christmas trees. Flowering by Christmas is meant to signify a long hot summer! Probably also signifies global warming these days.

Last year during November Artel Gallery in Otaki generously hosted me and my paintings for the two Trail weekends via a large workspace in the window and two huge walls for my paintings. This worked well with lots of interested people calling in to ask questions and to both admire and buy my paintings. I spent all four days painting some small canvases.

Now don’t jump in and agree so quickly . . . I mean that they are sometimes disgracefully large when you need to move them around. Some sizes can be transported in my trusty Vee Dub Van but some need a good-sized truck to be taken north to appropriate galleries (those with large white walls) or to appropriate homes (those with large white walls) wherever they happen to be. But always fun delivering paintings whatever size they are! Contact me anytime if you want some out-sized art. This is what I do!

This tone-on-tone painting BTW is not finished yet! I paint in layers and the current layer (shown BELOW) has it now looking a bit like giant water-lilies so its work-in-progress title is Eau Fleurs de Lys in memory of Monet whose amazing gardens and waterlily ponds at Giverny, we visited in France several thousand years ago, along with several thousand other tourists at the time. Yes, well . . . what with the known arty results of Monet’s failing eyesight and all that, we have a lot in common! But mine’s not finished yet!!

And below . . . Giverny France – The Real Thing . . . photo taken by dear devoted husband at his very best.

Career Accolades Are Always Welcome

Delighted this month to be notified by the President of the NZ Academy of Fine Arts that I had been nominated and accepted – in recognition of the standard and consistency of my work – for Academy membership status as an ‘Elected Artist’. Among other things this means my paintings will be exhibited by the Academy during exhibitions which are restricted to Elected Artists only – the first of these being scheduled for July 2020.

The Academy runs multiple group exhibitions of Members’ work in their professional complex of gallery spaces right on Wellington’s waterfront in the capital’s CBD. In the exhibition below I was one of eight artists provided their own space for this very successful group Solo 40 exhibition. Several paintings which followed an inspirational trip to the Milford Sounds featured and sold.

This painting ‘Red Flare Tides’ featured in another group exhibition at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in Wellington. And below a fund-raiser Exhibition the Academy hosts each year where the public’s ticket to the catered Opening also buys them a small original artwork – randomly allocated from the approximately 200 paintings donated and hung each year for this fund-raiser.

Solo Exhibition: December 2019 – January 2020

Art Matakana Gallery have exhibited and sold a lot of my work over the years. I love showing my work there. It took me a while to get the necessary number of paintings ready to hang by December 7. The blue painting below is Haze Over Bay of Islands at 1000mm square and the red one used for the exhibition flyer is Southern Vista 1500mm x 800mm.

Art Matakana Gallery is one of my favourite places to exhibit and over the last decade, my work has been featured successfully in solo exhibitions there virtually every year. Forty minutes north of Auckland in a semi-rural location the Gallery is a huge barn-like space which show-cases my work to perfection. See www.artmatakana.com. Below some images from previous exhibitions at Art Matakana . . .

Late 2019, before COVID hit New Zealand dear devoted husband towed a disgracefully noisy, bumpy rented furniture trailer full of paintings (and one tired passenger – in the car not the trailer) to Matakana (nine hours driving, arriving at 2am) because the VW van we usually stack the paintings in, blew a foo-foo valve the day before. Never had a single problem with it to date – Murphy’s Law! This morning almost recovered, dear devoted peered through this fabulous Rudy Van Der Pol metal sculpture to capture yours truly posing for the camera during the hanging of said paintings at the AMG. Managed to get 14 big and small paintings finished and well hung for this solo exhibition – not such a disgraceful outcome after all. Below Abandon Ship at 1200mm square and The Last Of The Summer Sun which is 2000mm x 1000mm.

Some time back I finished this metre square painting after a long elapse time. I had also been working on about 15 big and bigger canvases layering away as usual until I got happy with the results of each one. Getting this small but lasting burst of job satisfaction with each painting had been taking me longer than usual – not sure why. This lack of productivity despite putting in the hours eventually led to me having to cancel my upcoming exhibition which was scheduled at Tennyson Gallery in Napier – sadly due to a lack of finished work. Tennyson’s is a small but lovely gallery which regularly showcases my work so this felt very bad. Cancelling an exhibition anytime, anywhere is not really acceptable. Definitely not to be repeated! However finishing this painting Blue Moon Over Kidnappers was a good milestone – and the happy ending was that it did end up being purchased by a Hawkes Bay collector through Tennyson’s.

Above a previous exhibition of my paintings at Tennyson Gallery a few years ago. But don’t you just love that wonderful, abstract stainless steel sculpture though!! And below a pop-up Exhibition featuring some of my smaller paintings, staged in Wellington by Tennyson some time ago.

So I’m not participating in November 2019 as I have NO paintings to exhibit – not one! And no gallery to exhibit them at anyway seeing we have sold the house that had an exhibition studio/gallery attached and moved to Base Camp. Not good after a decade of participating in this event year after year.

Missed exhibiting at the NZ Art Show in Wellington a few months ago too for the same reason – no finished paintings to exhibit. This too is very disappointing! Not part of the big plan!

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Back painting now though in between sitting in the winter sunshine, creating several hundred wire plant protectors to keep the rabbits from eating the newly planted Grissilinias and Carex Testacea. Apart from the wiry bits, or perhaps even including them, landscape design and development at Base Camp stimulates the creative juices in many different ways – and at least I can do this bit sitting down, with my painting bandanna on to remind me of what I should be doing.

For many years, the Kapiti Arts Trail has been a regular entry in my Exhibition calendar excepting very recently since this property was sold and I had no suitable Trail space to exhibit in. Each year my rather disgraceful ‘studio’ at Otaki Forks overlooking the river gorge, had to be cleared and repainted to transform it into a ‘Gallery’ through which hundreds of people ‘trailed’ each year. See below – it scrubbed up well!

I continued to paint (and sell my paintings) throughout these weekends while chatting to visitors and trying to explain what I was doing on the work-in-progress canvases on show, alongside those that were finished. Outside under the canopy of a large portico, additional paintings – along with a selection of Bruce Winter’s small sculptures, were exhibited. The Kapiti Arts Trails were always enjoyable occasions with excellent sales.

This painting, sold long ago . . . is East Coast Tides and I had shifted everything in my studio outside under the portico while my usual painting space was itself being painted on all surfaces including the concrete floor in preparation for setting it up as a gallery for the multitude of Kapiti Arts Trail visitors due the following weekend.

Way back when – leisure travel was an option – but it wasn’t until I sat down in the Melbourne Koru Club Lounge ready to relax with a glass of bubbles until my flight was called . . . . that I noticed that my trendy new spotted top matched the decor so well it was rather embarrassing. After surreptitiously inspecting (head down, through my lashes) the further reaches of the lounge, I found I could not escape my chosen corner for fresh fields sporting different cushion covers. The spotted cushions were everywhere!

I had another drink, trying to avoid the strange looks on the attendant’s faces as they came over to clear my disgraceful row of champagne flutes. (Just kidding about the whole row.) No-one asked why I was taking a decapitated selfie! No one seemed to notice I was inadvertently listing to the right somewhat with my left arm at full stretch in order to include the cushions in my shot. Suffice to say that I won’t be wearing that particular top next time I go to Melbourne or if I do I must remember to fly home on Qantas.

The NZ Art Show which is now staged every Queens Birthday Weekend in Wellington city is a vast group exhibition featuring approximately 300 artists and thousands of paintings. More than $1 million worth of work from artists from all over New Zealand is sold each year. I have been accepted for and have exhibited very successfully at virtually every NZ Art Show in the last decade. The much anticipated 2020 live Show was cancelled due to Covid19 and replaced by an on-line Exhibition – which included some of my available works. The images below are collated from previous years.

Above, the last minute framing of First Light at the Falls on the floor in front of my exhibition ‘wall’ and below a closely packed selection on a much earlier NZ Art Show occasion.

In this image friend Steuart Welch’s sculpture frames our new living space. We have moved into Base Camp while we plan the new build and landscape the one hectare site! No studio to paint in here – the new painting space is an industrial shed in Otaki. I got this shot by lying full stretch on the mulch looking up hill. It took me about 20 minutes to get back up onto my feet! The sculpture is called ‘Pipe Dream’. See more of Steuart’s work at www.steuartwelch.co.nz.

The photo above is taken from Peka Peka Road, and shows the entrance to Quail Ridge lane with Base Camp in the foothills and the bulldozers in action up on ‘Everest’.

Fractured Light

This single painting ‘solo exhibition’ took place for just one day, a few years back, at a formal luncheon at the Beehive, during which the then Prime Minister the Rt Hon John Key gifted this painting to the Governor General Sir Jerry Mateparae and his wife Lady Janine on behalf of the people of New Zealand, on the occasion of the Governor General’s retirement. I was delighted when the couple who then lived in Kapiti chose this work Fractured Light, after visiting my studio gallery during two consecutive Kapiti Arts Trails. And it was a career highlight for dear devoted husband and I to be invited to attend the presentation at the Beehive – there we are on table 24. Although I’ve labelled this a solo exhibition . . . technically it was . . . with only one artist involved . . . but not sure about this with only one painting exhibited. Anyway this special painting subsequently travelled to London with its owners when Sir Jerry took up his position of High Commissioner of New Zealand to the UK. And back again three years later, to be hung in their private residence.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/culture/84169637/kapiti-artist-paints-farewell-gift-for-departing-governorgeneral

These work in progress images from a while back are of Slipstream Tides: Kapiti Island – on the left, half-finished in the background and see below for the finished painting. This painting was commissioned by a Kapiti client and measures 2000mm x 1000mm. On the right I am working on Island Beacons In The Mist shown finished in the centre image 2400mm x 1000mm and this painting can be also be seen in the Available Now Gallery too.

The following are a selection of images from some early exhibitions at various galleries in Wellington city and regional galleries on the Kapiti Coast and in Pauatahanui – plus those from dozens of solo and group exhibitions held in the Auckland area, Hamilton, Taupo, Manawatu and the Bay of Plenty among others . . .

CLIFTON INTERNATIONAL ART PRIZE 2012

First Light At The Floodgates