I’ve been creating art for as long as I can remember.
As a child, my favourite activity was drawing. I’d carefully arrange my pens in rainbow order before each session, a reflection of my early obsession with colour. Even in my earliest works – felt pen drawings from the age of four – colour played a central role. I’d cover every inch of the paper, drawing clowns, rainbows, zoo animals, trains – whatever captivated my imagination at the time. That same desire to reflect what fascinates me still drives my creative process today.
Art has always been my way of making sense of the world, of orchestrating it into something I find beautiful. My work isn’t a direct reflection of reality, but rather an insight into how I personally am experiencing that which I find beautiful or allegorical at that moment in time.
I’m a nature lover. The intricate veins of leaves, the texture of clouds, the way light interacts with everything – it all captivates me. I’m especially drawn to how light changes the colours of a landscape, how a single tree can shift through countless shades of green over the course of a day, a grassy maunga turning golden as the sun rises and falls.
I first truly noticed the brilliance of light and its effect on colour when I arrived in New Zealand as a new migrant. I had just turned 11 years old, the year was 1994. My favourite book was Treasure Island and my favourite movie was Jurassic Park. It seems absolutely fitting that I found myself on the shores of the Hauraki Gulf surrounded by magnificent volcanic cones, intense turquoise water, golden sands and magnificent palms. When I first got off the plane I was instantly struck by the intensity of light. The colours were much more vibrant than the muted grey tones I’d grown up with in northern Manchester.
The first house I lived in, on arriving in Aotearoa, looked across the harbour from Takapuna towards Auckland city. The Sky Tower was still under construction but the view of the harbour and Rangitoto was how I really first came to understand the passing of light on objects … there’s nothing quite like an ever-moving reflective body of water, man-made cuboids and natural occurring volcanic cones to perfectly demonstrate how light affects colour. From these early experiences, my obsessions with light and the natural world only grew.
The experimentation of adolescence and the exploration of early adulthood took me to Elam School of Fine Arts, where I found new ways of seeing and making.
On leaving art school and becoming an illustrator, my painting took a tiny bit of a hiatus, but by 2015, I was back at the easel painting up a storm and creating my bird works.
Those paintings featured majestic dawns, romantic twilight gradients, cradling native flora and fauna set against some of the Hauraki Gulf’s most iconic landmarks.
By 2019, I found life was leading me down a new path, the path to motherhood. I moved to the Far North, and though my intention was to return to the Hibiscus coast, life is what happens when you plan something else, so in April 2020 when the world went into those first Covid lockdowns, I found myself on my parents’ land, bringing my child into the world.
Motherhood transformed my world once more. In those early days with a newborn, painting felt impossible, so I turned to drawing and digital art on my iPad. It became a creative lifeline, especially in our tiny home where painting with traditional materials was hard to manage.
The rural beauty of the far north deeply influenced me. I became enchanted by the process of growing food and beautiful flowers from seed. With bubba in the baby wrap, I found a new creative avenue and I spent our earliest days together building beautiful gardens.
As my child has become more independent and their play more focused, I’ve returned to my brushes and it is gardens that have flowed out. Beautiful light-dappled dream gardens. As I find myself in motherhood, I am also finding myself in these gardens, like my child – we’re still growing, will continue to grow and allow that light to catch us and illuminate us in our many varied colours and forms.
Words by Anna Evans
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