Showing my art at the Dunedin Airport

Hi Everyone,

I hope you are all well.

I am still feeling the effects of the concussion, but all in all I can now do most things again in the same way and for the same length of time as before my injury. Yay!

I have a few exciting things coming up. One is that I recently found out my painting Lewis Pass Beech Forest will be included in the 2027 Contemporary New Zealand Art Calendar, designed by Elastic Design and published by Browntrout Australia. My painting will feature in the month of June. This feels like a huge privilege, given the status of the calendar and the number of entries they received and had to choose from. I love the variety of artworks they have selected. I will receive a limited number of calendars later in the year for purchase and will put out a call closer to the time.

The original painting is still available and will be a major feature in my next show, which brings me to my second piece of exciting news: I will be the featured artist at Dunedin Airport from next week until mid-July. In this exhibition, I will have my two larger forest scenes on display (Lewis Pass Beech Forest and Silent Weavers), along with some waterscapes, still life paintings, and nine little strawberry paintings of my show Nothing is Real – A Visual Remix of The Beatles. All paintings will be for sale, but my main aim is to make my work visible to a larger audience.

Other than that, I have been painting small colour studies to inform larger works. I am not yet sure which of the two I will choose to develop first, but they may both make it onto a larger board.

I have also completed a quick third study featuring a misty forest scene. It takes time to create fog that actually looks like fog with acrylics, as I have to build up smooth layers of paint that interact with each other. The effect becomes more translucent, and different colours shine through depending on light intensity, temperature, and angle. It is quite a neat effect, though never straightforward—and I could really do without all the hairs and fluff that seem to appear at exactly the wrong moment.

I have now started painting a similar scene on framed meranti plywood, measuring 900 mm x 310 mm. So far it looks quite grey, but the forest in the foreground will soon introduce fresh greens, and I am thinking of leaning the fog towards a pinkish tone, which it already slightly has.

That’s it from me for now. I wish you all well, and you’ll hear from me again in the coming weeks. Thank you again for signing up to my newsletter.