​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-Amohau

Images courtesy of
Nicola Bennett

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-Amohau

Images courtesy of
Mark Soltero

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. 

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.

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.

Growing up in Whangamata, about an hour north of Tauranga, provided a young Kane Facey with opportunities to explore two great loves: painting and surfing. At the local area school, a wave features prominently in the logo design and gives, perhaps, some indication of the lifestyle that is to be enjoyed in this part of the world.

Spending a great deal of time in the art room at school is regarded by Facey as a catalyst to his love of painting. Many hours every day were spent exploring different approaches to working with paint and other mediums. It was no surprise that when he left school Facey went on to study art at The Learning Connexion in Wellington.

From Dali-inspired scenes to vivid pop-art works, Facey’s painting style is diverse, but his landscapes have been his staple genre and photos from many surfing road trips provide endless inspiration.

Working on hand-made canvases, Facey works from photographs and finds the initial pencil lines to be the most satisfying part of the art-making process.

“I choose to not copy the image in its entirety. Instead, using it as a guide, I take elements from it and put in my own style.”

Currently living in New Plymouth, Facey has exhibited work in group shows and is now turning his attention towards solo exhibitions, but, as with many artists, balancing a range of commitments sometimes proves challenging.

Studies towards her doctorate in biochemistry brought Akshita Wason to New Zealand in 2010. Originally from India and a keen environmentalist, her artwork combines themes of adventure, environmental issues and the ever-shifting nature of the world around us.

A self-professed wanderer, Wason sees this as a consistent storyline in her work.

“I guess a wanderer is also synonymous with an explorer and an adventure; someone who experiments and moves on to a new realm. The theme also encompasses the transient nature of my work, always evolving at its own pace, much like the earthy elements. So, you will observe representations of mounds, hills, arborescent patterns and geological formations.”

Wason also views her work as a way to highlight present-day problems that face our natural environment.

“The present generation is facing a tremendous task of alleviating the long-term effects of human interruption in the natural order. My work aims to start a dialogue to discuss this issue and that is why there is a lot of influence from earthy-elements and forms.”

Since launching into her artwork, Wason has experimented with wide ranging themes, compositional elements, and ideas. Her work is tied together by consistent use of ink.

“It has taken me a few years, many trials, to understand how the ink or pigments interact with paper. I have had no official art training, and am mostly self-taught. I attend workshops whenever possible to learn new techniques and meet people.”

Considering the future direction for her art, Wason hopes to work in a larger scale but will continue interpreting her themes through abstract forms that allow her greater expression.

For Florence Egasse, the museums and galleries of Paris were “playgrounds for the eyes” and the artist considers childhood visits and hours spent enjoying works by the modern masters to be a major catalyst in developing her lifelong passion for art. 

After studying in Normandy, Egasse spent time in London and began to paint. Immediately drawn to abstracts, her work explored shapes and colour inspired by nature and her surroundings.

As her corporate career as a knowledge manager developed, Egasse found it difficult to find time for her art and any possibility of swapping her corporate life for a potential career as an artist was well-and-truly thwarted when when her first child was born. Now, after almost 15 years, with two children at primary school and her corporate career behind her, Egasse has once again thrown herself into art.

Egasse’s more recent work is a combination of landscapes and abstract works, often juxtaposing fluidity in shape and colour with geometric shapes that create a sense of energy and movement. Evidence of many hours spent enjoying the works of artists such as Henri Matisse are evident here.

“Matisse is a big influence in my work as he conveyed emotions through an expressive synthesis of colours and simple dynamic shapes.”

In much of her abstract work, Egasse focuses on working in a way that allows for spontaneity and freedom in the process of bringing her creations to life.

“The composition of some my work is kind of planned but can differ when the painting is finished. I like the idea that ‘less is more’, but, at times, this is difficult to achieve. I can struggle to decide when to stop but I eventually solve my own puzzle.”

Although some works are more carefully planned and executed, often Egasse prefers to see where the work takes her; often opting to be guided by the paint rather than beginning with a sketch. This open-ended approach to art-making allows for broad interpretations of her work.

Self proclaimed “accidental traveller” Santie Cronje, was born in South Africa and travelled through Europe before meeting her partner in the UK and moving to New Zealand.

“Travelling was never something I thought I would do a lot of; but I am an opportunist and I enjoy adventures”, Cronje explains.

One such adventure saw her travel by yacht from Cape Town to Gibraltar in 1998. A lover of the ocean, alongside travel, boats and the water have since become common themes in many of her artworks.

“Spending time in different countries has had a huge influence on my work. My sailing journey has become a symbol of the journey of life: how choices we make and take determine the next stages in our lives. If you stay or go are both equally big decisions.”

Birds were common visitors on Cronje’s sailing journey, often becoming the first to greet them before arriving at a new destination or calling the yacht home for a brief while before carrying on with their own journeys. This wildlife, too, has become a key subject in the artist’s work, symbolising journeys taken and migratory themes.

Cronje’s first New Zealand exhibition, in 2008, was titled ‘Creative Journeys’ and used birds as a symbol for her own migration. A similar show in 2009, ‘If Godwits Couldn’t Fly’ explored displacement and a sense of being torn between two countries.

Native to New Zealand, the godwit holds the record for the longest non-stop flight of any land-based, migratory bird.

“They fly to Alaska every year to breed and return again the following year”. If they can do that, I could be from two countries as well.”

Basing her work on a deep pool of experiences, it took several years in New Zealand for Cronje to gather the material and ideas to begin painting.

“The birth of my daughter became a way back in. I had painted for friends and family before, but becoming a mother made me braver. I set up my art business in New Zealand as a company and I was ‘The Sleepy Kiwi’, creating children’s art and Kiwi-themed ABC posters. It grew organically from there, and looking back over 10 years of exhibiting in galleries across New Zealand, it has been a continuous motion of growth and progress”.

This year, Cronje and her horticulturalist partner have combined their love of Art and Plants and opened Deciduus; a gallery and plant boutique. The space hosts a small number of artists for a three month period before changing artists and themes.

The gallery is currently hosting the works of seven female, New Zealand artists all working with botanical themes.

You can see more of Cronje’s work on her website www.santie.co.nz, and artists interested in learning more about Deciduus can follow the gallery on Facebook, www.facebook.com/deciduus.