Janet de Wagt

I’ve been working as artist in residence at Bathgate Park School of Arts & Technology for 3 days a week this year.  This is an exciting opportunity and I’m working with teachers and students to enhance creative opportunities, increase skills and reinforce classroom learning.  The long corridors of the school have become a natural gallery to display the children’s work – an art gallery for children by children! This year the school has been focused on The United Nations Goals for Sustainability, there are 16 in all, and the creativity of the children has been amazing.  In keeping with these goals most of the works have been made using materials that have been recycled, re-purposed and re-arted.  We will be having art tours of the school in Term 4 where I will take visitors around the displays and talk a bit about them and share coffee and cake.  If you are interested please email me for details.

 

it always takes a few days to get into a new landscape – its landmarks, the light and the local stories/ i nga ra o mua.  What an amazing coastline and beautiful Moutohora / Whale Island.  Painting on location means you have to be on location so with trusty ironing board I will travel.  Unfortunately due to heavy swells not to White Island this time… My paintings from this area are available from ‘Art & Acre’ artandacre@xtra.co.nz

I have talked to a lot of Rotary Clubs in my time as an artist – always good for a lunch first and then meeting really good people who are passionate about raising money for different community organisations.

This time I took 3 things that signify my creative life – a painting done on location in the Waitaki Valley, a book about the Mataura River Art Project and a historical plastic baby’s teething toy designed by Hilary Page in the 1940s.

After 10 years CARA (Community Assessment Rehabilitation Associates) has decided to end the funding for the ‘Women’s Art Group’.  This has been an amazing example of a private health provider funding an arts’ project.  Many women have used this art group, the women have had 4 very successful exhibitions and  I have given well received presentations at 2 TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) international conferences.

I hope to publish postcards of the artwork made as a celebration of the last 10 years.

Painting is just one way I express my creativity.  My house is another. A place where I display some of my large collection of historical plastics, other collectables and art.  This art group was interested in visiting me at home and hearing about my life as an artist here and in Britain.

There are many art groups who collectively buy art and share it around among the members in their group.   The art they buy expresses their interests, passions and special places.  A member of this group loves Griffons and their special walking place on the harbour.

(Below is part of that painting)

It’s so sad that as children many of us only got one version of the local stories that bring the land alive.  I was very privileged to be support crew for friends who were walking on ‘Te Heke’ from Omarama to the mouth of the Waitaki river.   The walk honoured the Waitaha prophet Te Maiharoa, who was evicted from his ancestral homelands and had his village at Omarama destroyed by the constabulary in the winter of 1879.

I painted in the stunning Waitaki valley and have since returned many times to add to the series of paintings I started then.

Sometimes I’m asked to do a painting from a particular place that is special and has great personal significance.  This in turn gives me an opportunity to paint in some amazing places.  This is one of them.  I have painted Ruby Island many times and from many angles, even from on it , but this particular view is from private land and is not one I would ever normally have the opportunity to paint.  Thanks Sara and Tom, and The Olive Grove for letting me get my trailer down there on their nice new lawn!!

It’s always important for me to go to another country and visually soak up the differences – it refreshes my visual bank in a way I can’t really explain.

As well as going for a birthday I worked on a small part of a larger photographic project that is still ongoing and a work in progress.

I was also interested in the history and the remnants of Dutch colonisation in Java & Bali.

How’s this for a family tree illustration? – in the palace at Yogyakarta!

It was fun and challenging to judge the great line up of exciting and diverse creativity on show!  Congratulations to the Otago Art Society for acknowledging and encouraging the creativity of young people in Otago!

It was an honour to be asked to open this anniversary exhibition.  I was the first guest artist to be featured and I remember well, 10 years ago, dropping off my paintings near the farm gate for that very first exhibition.  I had a bunch of good thoughts, excited at people and artists committed to bringing the creative spirit to the depths of the Catlins!

It was great to be able to be there again to celebrate this achievement with everybody involved in the Southern District Arts Trust.