I’ve just finished two commissions, and both are now in the hands of their new owners. Working on commissions always comes with a bit of a challenge—mainly because you never quite know if what you think works will line up with what the client had in mind. There’s always that little bit of uncertainty around whether expectations will be met.

These two recent pieces couldn’t have been more different in terms of approach. One was very straightforward: a collector of mine wanted a painting based on a single photograph. There wasn’t much to figure out in terms of composition, which allowed me to focus more on technique. The only thing I changed a bit was to introduce more vibrant colours in the tūi to make it stand out more. I loved painting this piece, everything just flowed from start to finish and it didn’t take as long as I thought it would.

Here are some shots from the Commission Tūi in Bottlebrush:

The first layers of the tūi in the bottlebrush. This painting measures 50cm in diameter.

The finished painting

A close up on the tūi and some of the bottlebrush

The second commission, on the other hand, was quite the opposite. It was a present from the children to their parents and should depict their farmland where they once lived for many years—a place full of emotional history for them. There wasn’t one photo that captured the essence of what they were after, so it involved a lot of planning, sketching, and piecing together to get a feel for the place and to figure out perspective, composition and light. Even though I made some sketches beforehand, they didn’t feel quite right, and once I started the painting, the overall scene just didn’t work. The composition felt off—rather than working together, the elements were competing with each other instead of sitting in harmony. So, in the end some elements made it into the final painting, others didn’t (like the feeder and the calves). Honestly, it was one of those really hard going pieces because of the construction of it all and mainly also because I wasn’t sure if I’d managed to capture the spirit of the place.

But in the end, it was all so worth it. I learned a lot along the way—about planning, composition, and painting in general. These tricky pieces make me connect more deeply with the work in the moment, and I always come away feeling like a slightly better painter. The best part by far though was hearing back from them after they received it—and learning that they were genuinely happy with it—meant the world to me. I poured a lot of time, energy, and sweat into that piece, and knowing it resonated with them makes it all worthwhile.

These are the progress pictures and final version of “Beneath Mt Te Aroha”

In the first version of this painting there were some calves. However they did not work well with the overall composition of the painting and didn’t make it to the final version. The people then needed to be more central and prominent, so they had to be redone a lot bigger.

I used a plastic sheet to cover the. calves and see to draw in the family a little big bigger and more central. Once I was sure where to go from there and had discussed it with my client I made the necessary changes.

And this is the final version. This painting measures 60cm in diameter.

A close up of the dad on the bike.

I took a shot of the finished painting caressed by the first sunrays in the morning-still on the easel in my studio.

Over the next few months, I’ll be fairly busy with another commission, finishing up a large forest painting that’s almost done, and preparing for my next solo show at the Otago Art Society—upstairs in the railway station, in the Joan Hardey Gallery. The show will run from 17–30 November (no opening date set just yet). At the moment, I’m painting lots of strawberries for this exhibition! More on that—and a few other developments—in the next newsletter.

Thanks so much for your support, for following along, and for taking the time to read this.