​Nicola Bennett loves making food, and it is in the kitchen that she has found the greatest source of inspiration for her art. Working in mixed media with oils, acrylics, spray paint, and pastels, the Bay of Plenty artist aims to capture moments and create a sensory experience for the viewer.

“Looking at an artwork might be an experience of seeing, feeling, smelling even tasting. In a way, the sense of reality and the imagined combine. Could the viewer have a sensual experience through vision by triggering memories or the imagined senses?”

“When I cook I have a sketchbook on my kitchen bench. I record how a certain action, like grating, might translate to a mark on paper. I use those marks in my paintings. I think of colours like flavours, and how they interact, for example, the smoothness or crunchiness of food translated in terms of visual textures and surfaces. When I'm in the kitchen I want to be in the art studio; when I'm in the art studio, I'm thinking about creating in the kitchen. The two processes are connected.”

Bennett holds a Masters of Fine Arts with First Class Honours from Auckland’s Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design and has been working as a full-time artist for just over a year.

“I’d always thought being a full time artist wasn’t financially possible in New Zealand, but I realised that was just a story I’d told myself.”

In her first year, Bennett sold 24 paintings: 21 herself and three through a gallery. She identifies maintaining motivation and sticking to her business plan as her main challenges.

“It’s not enough to just a make the work. You need to sell, whether that’s selling the work yourself or selling yourself to a gallery. It takes consistent, persistent effort. I’ve learnt to have a thick skin and I know my work isn’t for everyone, but the people that love it, love it. That’s enough.”

​In addition selling, Bennett leases her work to businesses in Rotorua and as been running children’s art workshops for the past five years. Previously a secondary school art teacher, Bennett is passionate about children developing what she refers to as their four ‘C’s: creative thinking, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication.

“I’m always blown away with what children can produce when you set them up for success. This also inspires me in my own work. The younger ones especially make confident and interesting marks. Their way of seeing the animals and people is gorgeous. As Picasso said, he spent his whole life trying to draw like a child.”

When it comes to finding inspiration, Bennett suggests not overthinking it.

“I think the key is just to start. Then let each mark dictate the next mark and so on. Like writing a book, you write the first sentence and then the story unfolds. If I ask myself questions like ‘are the colours balancing? is it too busy?’ then the work becomes too contrived somehow. I think it’s better to react to your instinct, which naturally knows the answers to those questions.”

Written by
George Arthur

Images courtesy of
Nicola Bennett

How do people react to your work?

People have said it lifts up their spirits. Usually they talk about joy and happiness.

Someone once said, “you must have had a wonderful childhood experience to create such joyful work.” They were comparing me with a friend who was painting very dark works, and they said, “he looks like he might have experienced some trauma.” Actually it was the other way around!

I don’t have to try to find that sense of joy in my work. It’s who I am. It’s really what attracts and grabs me. I want to create art that is uplifting when you look at it.

Is it easy to tap into that emotion when you’re painting?

I think that sometimes the faster you work, the more emotion there is. You could describe so much with very few brush strokes and for me, that’s where true art comes. Of course, you can spend hours and weeks and months on a painting. It’s the same with words. You can say something with few words, or you could say the same thing with thousands of words. What’s more powerful?

That’s why it’s hard. Sometimes people ask me, “how long did it take you to create that?” Well the thing is, the quicker I create it, the more powerful it is. When it takes longer, it weakens.

I wouldn’t say I’m creating art. I think the art happens in the reaction of the person who views it. Someone might look at it and experience nothing, and someone else might start to cry.

Does inspiration come easily to you?

I never have to try to find inspiration. It’s always there.

For me, the challenge has always been wanting to paint but struggling to find the time. It’s never the other way around.

As a professional artist you make the time. You start painting and while you’re doing it you get into the mood and the space. If inspiration isn’t coming, simply don’t sit and wait: just start doing it and while you are you’ll get into the zone.

The more you do, the better you get, and the more enjoyment you get out of it. It’s addictive.

You don’t always get the feeling you want. Quite often, when I’m painting, I look at it and I think, “that’s terrible”, but then you walk away and think wow! Of course, other times you think, “wow, it’s so cool, I’m enjoying it”, and then you walk away and look and it’s awful!

It’s important to know when to stop. If it doesn’t feel good, leave it. I only have energy to paint for about four hours a day - sometimes only two - before I feel like I’m running out of that good energy. Then I know I’m not actually making it better: I’m fiddling, but it’s going downhill. That’s when I walk away. Sometimes I might leave it for a long time.

I am inspired by other artists. I discover beautiful artwork every day on Instagram.

Some artists worry that if they watch and study other artists too closely, that they may end up in a place where they’re copying. What are your thoughts about that?

I think that if you’re learning, that’s good. In art school we were copying old masters. Even if you try to be like someone, in time you will develop your own style.

Of course, there are just so many styles and ways of working which means it’s very hard to create something totally new. For example, I discovered a technique in watercolour that took me a couple of years to develop. Then, afterwards I discovered someone else who was using exactly the same technique! I’d never seen that artist’s work.

You tend to be influenced, perhaps by someone who’s class you’ve taken, and that’s okay. You can learn so many things from other artists, but I think we are all so unique. Now matter how much you try to be like someone else, in the end the world will be your own. It’s like your handwriting.

I really value skill. Good art is the combination of so many things. There are a lot of good ideas, but if the skill isn’t there it doesn’t work. It’s not often the other way around. It takes years and years to develop skill, and once it’s there the ideas will come.

​You’ve run art workshops and also one-on-one tuition. How did you get started teaching?

Put Some Colour in your Life gave me a lot of exposure. They filmed me for four hours, and then put it across in 20 minutes, and for some reason he put me across as a teacher, which I wasn’t at the time.

People started enquiring about tuition and workshops, and I wasn’t sure about it.

I thought, “what would be a price that I would be happy to do this for?” Organising group workshops is not me. I don’t like administration and stuff like that. But if someone organises a group of ten people and pays me $800 a day, I’ll come. It doesn’t happen often, which is the way I like it. I do maybe two workshops a year, and maybe ten weeks a year where people come to the house. But that’s it.

It’s not that I don’t like it, but I need to find a way of teaching where I don’t get drained.

So it sort of happened by accident?

For many years, I never thought I could be a teacher. I think you can be a good artist but not a god teacher, or the other way around. To begin with I found it hard because I thought painting was all about intuition, and I didn’t know how to articulate it. But, I went to America and did a few workshops and found the words.

Art is a learnable thing. Pretty much anyone could learn to paint or draw.

Do you think everyone would agree with that?

No. But what I’m saying is true… if you put enough time into it.

What I’ve started understanding, and I wish I was taught it at art school, is that everything in art is logical. If it’s logical, it’s learnable. You just have to take the time and work step-by-step to learn it. 

Everyone can become an artist. That doesn’t mean everyone will be exceptional; but they can learn it.

So, for you, it’s about the art. Teaching is not what you love, but you still think it’s important to share what you know?

Oh, yes! There’s so much joy that I have from my art, and I want to share that with others. People have done that for me in the past. Nancy Tichborne was one of them. She introduced me to a layering technique which opened new horizons for me!

In the Ukraine I had no-one to look up to as an artist. I had no-one to inspire me. As a child, I was in an institution, which was a horrible place, and I went to art school as a way to escape. But even at art school we never saw the teachers painting. And under communism, you only saw work in museums.

Now, in New Zealand and with the internet, it has been so amazing to discover other artists.

How many people do you follow on Instagram?

Probably 100 or 200.

I probably spend half an hour a day browsing instagram to look at other artists’ work. But what fascinates me is the marketing thing. Not how to paint, but how to present yourself and how to explain what you’re doing. Sometimes you don’t even need to post a finished painting, you can share your process.

For me, social media isn’t about what I’m putting into it, it’s about what I’m getting out of it. Sometimes people say, “thank you for sharing, it’s so good to see your process”, and It’s encouraging. To be honest, I think, “who would give a damn what I’m doing”.

The internet has turned every artist into a business person. There’s a pressure to have a website, and be on instagram, and market your work. What is your experience of this?

Three years ago I didn’t even have a Facebook page, and I knew that I was one of the last artists to do that.

I’ve had varied experiences with galleries, and I think it’s important for artists to develop confidence about the value of their work and how it should be priced. Some work is over-priced and some work is under-priced; I see it all the time.

Social media is a good thing because it means you’re in charge of your own promotion.
​
How do you decide on your prices?

It’s very hard. You have to look at other work that is selling and you have to have a feel for the market. Pricing is pure business. Sometimes you might choose prices and not sell, and then you have to meet the market. Unfortunately there’s no consistency.

Ten years ago I struggled to put an exhibition together because it was selling so fast, and at the moment it’s building up a bit.

I will still paint, whether I sell or not. When I sell, it’s such a bonus but it’s not the main reason I paint.

What would you say to people who aspire to be a professional artist?

It’s not that glorious. It’s so much hard work. Being an Artist can also be a very lonely occupation. If you prepared to spend hours and hours by yourself in the studio then it’s for you.

You have to be prepared to work really really hard. I don’t have any magic talents. Everything I can do I’ve developed over a long time. It’s all learnable.

When I look at my work, I see what I want to keep learning.

Written by
George Arthur

Images of artwork courtesy of
Svetlana Orinko

Photography by
​George Arthur

At art school in the early 90s, Mark Soltero considered himself to be a painter. He thought of printmaking and photography as being “really flat” and could not have imagined how much he would be drawn to these mediums in his future work.

Originally from San Fransisco, Soltero now lives in Governor’s Bay, near Christchurch, and works across all three of these fields. His work, which draws on the nature of cinema and also personal experience, incorporates a unique stencilling process in which almost all parts of the stencils, including the reverse sides and the stencils themselves, are used.

“I think of all three fields as extensions of drawing. For me, they’re all manifestations of visual thinking; ways of making images,” Soltero explains.

“A lot of my work starts off with an image that begins in my mind or is triggered by some fragment of an image I’ve seen. I might take a drawing from a sketch book and put it together with a digital image so I can see what the two suggest together, or I might begin with a digital drawing and print it out before beginning to cut into it. Considering the relationship I had with printmaking and photography, it’s pretty funny that my work has come to focus so much on filmic and commercial image making processes.”

In a recent series, titled ‘History is Cinematic’, Soltero focused on the interiors of cinemas as “containers of images, history and memory”. The completed body of work produced large-scale images, some up to six metres wide, and provided a starting point for his current series, ‘Fragments of Memory’.

In this body of work, paintings and monoprints are created on a variety of substrates including wool blankets, which are chosen for their histories of care and protection and the concept of family. The works, which incorporate actual fragments of the previous series, reflect a turbulent period of Soltero’s life arising from the disintegration of his family and other tumultuous events in the late 1970s.

“In the 24-month period that began with the summer of 1977, my parents began an eight year divorce, we moved several times, the mayor and now-famous city counsellor Harvey Milk were assassinated, and the Jonestown Massacre took place. All of these events were in very close view, and, for me, this period is when image became synonymous with projection. Coincidentally, at the beginning of that summer, I had just become aware that I wanted to be an artist, even although I had no idea what that meant.”

Counterbalancing the seemingly endless options provided from working across three artistic fields, Soltero limits himself to a colour palette that is almost exclusively black and white.

“Both black and white have a long and rich history across many cultures and in Western Art in general,” says Soltero.

A common practice throughout the history of art across all mediums, a restricted colour palette provides artists with the opportunity to reduce visual noise and focus on the development of particular ideas and procedures. 

“You can look back through the history of a given artists’ work and see periods where artists have reduced what they were doing before springing into a new body of work. The Cubists initially limited their colour palette. Pollock limited his colour palette at the beginning of his drip series. Later, after he’d reached a zenith, he again went back to black and white to try and work out where he was going next. You can look at more contemporary examples and see the same thing."

The work of Kara Walker, who initially became known for large black paper silhouettes installed on the walls of galleries and museums, is a major inspiration for Soltero.

“She’s such a power-house of talent. I love the fact that there’s this power in the scale of what she’s doing while at the same time there’s a delicateness and fragility in the medium.”

Alongside a restricted palette, the process of stencilling is in itself restrictive but also highly rewarding.

“The reveal, when you lift a stencil after having painted over it, is probably the moment of greatest joy - or total frustration - in my process.”

“The individual random shapes that make up a given stencil make me think of molecules or particles in space. They’re very simple and mundane but together they form a relationship and make an image. There’s a curiosity. I have to find different relationships between them by taking those small cut outs and rearranging them.”

Stencilling also brings about opportunities for chance and accident. 

“When I lay the stencils out for a painting. I can cut as accurately as a machine and I can map out the placement of each section but ultimately they migrate and do their own thing.”

“The concept of control is somewhat contradictory just like black and white appear to provide clarity and a kind of fixed assurance but also together they make grey, which is like the perfect analogy to imprecision.”

Soltero intends to continue working at a large scale and is interested in exploring what can be achieved with instillations.

“I think about paintings that hang in the space rather than on the wall. I’m interested in what experiences might occur between the image in the painting and the physicality of the image as a material object located in space. In this way there might be an interaction between the visual referents to space and time in the image, and the referents manifested by physical experience of the material in its location.”

“In my work I think about the way we see objects and events in our immediate surroundings, and how we think about these objects and events. For example we might reflect on where we just were an hour ago, and we’re able to project ourselves mentally to another space and time. We can see this space and time and think of the sounds and visual experiences we had there and then while we’re here and now. Our minds are always processing in this manner. I try to deal with an experience of space that takes into account this wide range of things we probably all think about but perhaps don’t often have the opportunity to reflect on.”

You can see more of Solteros work on his website, marksoltero.com.

Written by
George Arthur

Images courtesy of
Mark Soltero

No Shame, No Silence is an exhibition consisting of over 20 New Zealand artists united by a shared perspective on family violence. Aiming to shine a light, cultivate conversation and inspire and press for change, the group show has been open to the public since 2 November at the Te Awahou Nieuwe Stroom in Foxton.

Through their works, each contributing artist has shared their own perspective or experience with family violence and the family court system.

The event’s organiser, Sarah-Jayne Shine, is a survivor of family violence and is passionate about art as an opportunity to engage local communities in issues that can be otherwise overlooked.

“The concept of No Shame No Silence came to light after I participated in a march to parliament with a group of women in August last year,” Shine explains.

“It was a highly emotional day, we marched in the wind and rain to deliver a petition for a royal commission of inquiry into the family court. When nothing had happened six months later, I decided we needed to put more pressure on the government.”

With a background in art and design, Shine saw an exhibition as a platform for other creatives to comment on the situation.

The exhibition launched with a special opening event on 1 November that included talks from Women’s Refuge, Backbone Collective, Jackie Blue from the Human Rights Commission, and personal stories from two of the artists.

An auction held on opening night raised over $1,800, and the organisers have been pleased with feedback received from visitors so far.

“The flow of the exhibition is about taking the viewer on a journey. As you walk into the exhibition you are immediately confronted with people from all over New Zealand’s trauma at the hands of the family court through the piece ‘Untitled Woman and Children’. You turn right to walk around the room and it takes you through feelings of grief and trauma, to healing and survival, ending with a celebration of a survivors endurance.”

You can visit the No Shame, No Silence exhibition until December 15. It is free to view, and artwork purchased will fund donations to Te Awahou Nieuwe Stroom, Backbone Collective and Women’s Refuge.

For more information about the exhibition, visit noshamenosilence.co.nz.

Kylie Law has been creating bold mixed media works from her home in Wellington for 20 years. Despite changes in her colour palette over time, Law’s work is instantly recognisable for her striking combination of fabric and pattern.

Law’s first experience of exhibiting work was during her final year of college when her pieces were shown at the NZ Academy of Fine Arts. This opportunity provided the encouragement and inspiration to continue painting and exhibiting. Following a short break from her artwork whilst pursuing a career in Marketing, Law returned to her creative journey when she found herself at home with small children while her husband was travelling.

This time at home not only provided time for Law to return to her art, but also inspiration in terms of the subject matter that is primarily centred around her home and family.

“Sometimes I introduce phrases or words into my work when I feel like I need to convey various thoughts. For example ‘you are my world’, ‘my world for ever and ever’, ‘come home soon’ were all prominent in a series I worked on when my children were young.”

Law has always painted abstracts and has applied a great deal of thought to the combination of colours and textures that she has explored over the past two decades.

“I change my colour palette regularly to continue to challenge myself and to keep learning and growing. I also read a lot about paint techniques and spend a lot of time looking at colour and texture resource, both online and through my local library.”

A love of fabrics, especially those of vintage styles and patterns, not only informs Law’s work, but is incorporated into it.

“[The fabrics] bring back memories of spending time with my grandmothers. It’s really important to me to be able to incorporate this aspect of nostalgia to my work. It’s my history and my current experience combined on a canvas. I’m also a keen quilter and this love of fabric translates into the canvas from my passion for sewing.”

Law describes her artistic purpose as introducing contemporary, individual, mixed media works to as many people as she can. 

On paper, you could be forgiven for thinking that Ryan Dewsbury has a few more years under his belt than is the case. Actually in his early 30s, the Christchurch-born creative has had no shortage of experience; having thrown himself into a wide range of fields including art, music, sports, architecture and technology amongst others.

“I have been described as ‘wearing many hats’”, says Dewsbury, rather modestly.

Perhaps more aptly described as a Renaissance man, his skillset extends from charcoal drawing to making clothes; customising musical instruments; building computers; framing artwork; and, more recently, designing and creating jewellery.

After studying architecture and computer-aided design, Dewsbury launched into music and has since been a member of three bands including ‘Radio Ron’ who produced three albums and spent several years entertaining Cantabrian socialites at Dux de Lux. He now plays with well-known Christchurch band, ‘Beagle Boys’.

Dewsbury’s most recent creative endeavour was inspired largely by a recent change in employment. Notable for its jewellery, Christchurch’s Form Gallery provides not only inspiration but also a workshop space and the gallery’s Founding Director and talented jeweller, Koji Miyazaki, saw Dewsbury’s potential early on.

“My jewellery so far, and the pieces I wish to create in the future, are of a bold, minimalist, and structural nature. I tend to start my designs with a series of calculations or measurements, trying to find the right visual balance. Once started, I often find a new direction to take the design in as I'm making it and let the design develop naturally rather than being strict to the original plan.”

Dewsbury’s background in architecture and design has proved both useful and influential in his jewellery making.

“I still use the precision of tech drawing to start a jewellery design, and try to incorporate the rules of photography, architecture and graphic design to the piece.”

A successful first exhibition early in 2018 provided positive feedback and attracted the interest of Kiwi company, Phoenix Lingerie who have asked Dewsbury to create pendants featuring their logo. 

Going forward, Dewsbury hopes to fill a gap in the market for stylish, bespoke men’s jewellery.

“Commercial jewellery for men is fairly easy to find but over-priced. Artisan pieces and more interesting designs seem to be lacking.”

Dewberry feels lucky about the way in which he has fallen into the jewellery craft, but notes that starting out can be tough and expensive.

The work of Christchurch Artist Galina Kim draws on a wide range of subjects, but is easily recognisable by the subtly fragmented quality and variety of textures that draw on her expertise as a textile artist. With two masters in design and fine arts, Kim’s creative work has been a lifelong career and a constant during times of upheaval.

Born in Kazakhstan, Kim’s family moved to the Ukraine when she was 12. Travel, changes and goodbyes featured strongly in her adult life as well. Her first husband was in the military and this led to many years of movement that left Kim longing for somewhere to connect and belong.

“I longed for a home, in every sense of the word: somewhere safe to bring up my two boys, and somewhere quiet to find and digest inspiration.”

Eventually Kim found that home in Christchurch. 

“I found myself. I rediscovered my roots and put down new ones, and the diversity of my art reflects the intertwining of cultures, experiences, values and influences within me,” says Kim.

Major life changes revealed themselves through distinct changes in Kim’s work, and her classical training - which had provided many years of valuable structure and discipline - suddenly felt restricting.

​Drawn to the versatility of acrylics, Kim spent years exploring the medium; working with different techniques, processes, products and tools.

“No one showed me any shortcuts. Everything I learned about working with acrylics, mixed media and palette knives, I discovered on my own. I think this has helped me to develop a distinctive and unique style.”

This approach to art making has become something of a mantra for Kim who provides private lessons and workshops for artists.

“I think it is important to put aside what you have been taught or told by others is ‘right’ and give yourself the freedom to play and explore and discover new ways of approaching your art so that it reflects your own journey and insights.”

In her own work, Kim’s approaches are combined with a yers of experience as a fabric designer. An expert in Batik, a term for various techniques of painting on fabric, Kim draws on the skills and processes of this art form and adapts them to her paintings.

Reservation, a concept at the heart of Batik, involves blocking out selected areas of cloth to preserve and emphasise both colours and patterns of the underlying fabric. Instantly recognisable in her painting, variations on this blocking technique reveal and mask aspects of composition, colour and pattern.

“For me, it's not just about capturing colour, texture, light, shape and space; it's also about releasing the feel, scent, sound and taste of moments in time. Capture and release; traditional and contemporary; realism and abstraction; simple and complex. Embracing the balance of complementary opposites like these is at the core of my work and, indeed, my life."

After teaching Art for 15 years, Whangarei-based artist Judy Woods has spent the last two years developing an intuitive painting style that explores rich layers of both family history and the painting process itself.

Woods has not always painted abstract works, but her earlier, more realistic works still began with a layer of more expressionistic painting in order to give the finished work a greater sense of texture and depth.

“I enjoyed how it felt to paint in this way and loved some of the effects, even though only some of this would show through in the finished work.”

A fan of Rauschenberg and Diebenkorn, the allure to experimenting with abstraction was strong, and when Woods’ father passed away in 2016, the time felt right to begin working in a more intuitive style. “My father’s death brought me sharply eye-to-eye with the brevity of life and so I threw myself wholeheartedly into my painting.” “For a year, I explored painting intuitively; just responding to what showed up on the canvas as I played with materials and ideas. I found this incredibly difficult but also exhilarating as marks, surface effects, and combinations of materials would surprise and result in work that referenced unplanned ideas and thoughts. I became more and more enchanted with the accidental mark.”

​More recently, a switch to painting on wooden panels has allowed greater expression in Woods’ work.

“My work is becoming looser and I’m incorporating collage underneath many layers of paint to create lumps and bumps and a history in the work. I dig into the wood and sand back through layers to reveal all sorts of hidden surprises.”

Like many others, Woods was quick to discover that painting in a truly intuitive way was not as simple as one might first imagine.

​With no guidelines or blueprint to begin with, Woods’ approaches each of her works by experimenting with different processes of adding and removing layers as she discovers what works and what doesn’t. This results in works that are richly layered and draw on the history of the painting process. “Digging back down to those layers of experimentation underneath always reveals lovely little bits that are quite unexpected.  So the process really serves the best outcome.”

Adding another layer of meaning to Woods’ work, she has recently begun to incorporate motifs and messages from a collection of over 200 of her parents’ letters to each other.

“We found the letters  in the back of my father's wardrobe the night before his funeral.  My mother didn't know that he had kept them and she spent the first months after his death reading them over again.”

“Recently my mother died and I am discovering their love story through the letters. To have access to the very beginnings of their partnership, which lasted 58 years, is incredibly precious. Initially I used the words “darling mine” in my paintings, and I want to photocopy their handwriting to somehow include in my work.  I use collage in my paintings so this would easily work.”

You can see more of Judy’s work on Instagram, where she shares both finished work and insights into her painting process.

Sculptor and Tutor at The Learning Connexion in Wellington, Aaron Frater creates both assembled and carved works that have found homes in private residences and community spaces all over New Zealand. He has exhibited work for nearly 40 years and has taken part in group and solo shows in New Zealand, Japan, the United States and Australia.

Currently working with barrier mesh as his sculptural medium, Frater’s latest work is a study in iconic, symbolic and sign-like structures.

“The mesh is a barrier that separates safe space from unsafe space. In a way, it’s like cloth; separating private space from the world at large.”

Ubiquitous in industrial health and safety, the material goes unnoticed in our day-to-day lives, but Frater’s creations aim to draw our attention to the literal and metaphorical ideas surrounding it. The mesh serves to protect and demarcate, and the distinctive orange colour is intended to be a warning. Frater flips these concepts on their head; creating works that draw us un to take a closer look.

“The material itself has meaning: it is, a barrier between one world and another. The bright orange signals one area of life that is legislated safe, and another legislated as dangerous, and only accessible to the ‘specialist’.”

Frater sees the transitional nature of the mesh represented by its lack of physical substance, but instead of seeing this minimal, open structure as limiting, he embraces it as a material that retains elements of its original function in his work.

​Frater’s latest exhibition, ‘Way Home’, opens on 6 September in Newtown, and explores our place in relation to housing, to space, to rules and regulations. He hopes his work will question the nature of protection and shelter and draw attention to ideas of separation and coming together.

Recently named the first New Zealand, Annie Sloan Painter in Residence, North Island painter Jeanie Simpson has a passion for breathing new life into unloved furniture. Inspired by everything from Art Deco to folk art, her creations are wide ranging in style but are connected by her love of quality materials and traditional craftsmanship.

“I look out for something that a little different and that helps with forming inspiration when planning to paint.”

The process of finding pieces to work with can be time consuming, and simply finding any old furniture isn’t enough. For Simpson, sustainability is a key part of her process so she actively seeks out pieces that are run-down or unfashionable enough to warrant extensive restoration and transformation.

Aiming to work with the history of a piece rather than erase it, Simpson retains remnants of old layers of paint when completing restorations. Bumps and scrapes become sources of inspiration and combine with ideas gleaned from research into particular design styles to create truly unique works that both respect the past and embrace the present.

“Each time I research a new era or design movement, I get totally immersed and enthused about artists, designers and craftsmen of the time.”

The Arts and Crafts movement that flourished across Europe and North America in the late 1800s is a favourite for Simpson. Following the industrial revolution, the Arts and Crafts style reacted to a perceived decline in manufacturing standards that accompanied what was the beginnings of mass production, and embraced traditional craftsmanship and simple forms.

Not only influencing the style of her work, the Arts and Crafts movement bears relevance to the concept of furniture restoration, and connects with our modern-day need for sustainability in design.

​“The sustainability aspect about what I’m doing is really important to me. My parents valued antique furniture over new furniture so, growing up, I learnt to appreciate the craftsmanship and history of old pieces. It saddens me to see much of this furniture is really unfashionable now and consumers would rather buy cheap new furniture every few years”.

Generally of a much higher quality than their contemporary counterparts, the pieces that Simpson works with feature solid wood and handmade construction that is valued by the style-conscious.

“Older furniture is generally much better quality than newer versions. Drawers were made of solid timber - not just cheap chipboard with timber laminate - and everything was assembled by hand. Furniture that’s as little as 40 or 50 years old is often of really good quality.”

“The concept of reusing furniture and making it functional and desirable in a modern home is important and I’m really passionate about it. People don’t want unfashionable furniture in their homes (I certainly don’t!), but that’s where I come in: to try and bridge this gap.”

You can see more of Simpson’s work on her website, www.jeaniusreloved.com.