Creative
Punakaiki and surrounds provide inspiration for painters, poets, potters, printmakers, music makers and many other creatives.
Fiona McDonald
Fiona McDonald is a multidisciplinary artist and alchemist who creates jewellery and a boutique range of skincare.
She also paints New Zealand landscapes and birds, inspired by the deep connection she has with the wild natural environment in which she lives.
Evelyn Hewlett
I work in the hope that the feeling of Punakaiki comes up through the soles of my feet to arrive in my paintings as some sort of aesthetic disclosure; new to me and the world. I have lived most of my life here and have two children and a Master of Fine Art in Painting (with distinction) from Canterbury University.
Review excerpt:
“Evelyn Hewlett’s exhibition is a constantly surprising and rewarding visual experience of mixed media paintings. In ‘Above as Below’ the painting fluctuates between an apparent chaotic organisation of forms (highly unstable but animated) and a beautifully constructed equilibrium of shape and colour.’
Warren Feeney Review; ‘Otututuism’ Left Bank Gallery, Grey Star
Trevor Hayes
“Mostly I am inspired by the absurdity of our existence. In my poetry I am trying to make sense of it all while simultaneously trying, as Talking Heads might have it, to ‘stop making sense’.”
Trev has published a book of his poetry Two Lagoons with Seraph Press. His poems have also been published in Sport, Landfall and other literary magazines.
Review of Two Lagoons
Anna Priluka
Anna is a painter and printmaker.
Her works are ecosystems on a small scale. Using traditional botanical and natural history illustration as a starting point, each relies on a range of sources – from ecological surveys or botanical identification manuals to recipes and gardening books.
They seek to celebrate the wonderful diversity and beautiful strangeness of New Zealand’s natural environment, while at the same time reminding us of the fragility that is inherent in such complex, interdependent systems.
Mary Anderson
I like to think of my work as environmental. It’s hugely about what I have absorbed living in this wild landscape. Although my inner landscape is equally important my work centres on my environment and environmental issues. It’s overlaid with imaginings, dreamings and personal symbols.
My creative mission is to evoke wild places mixed with a nostalgic dreaming narrative brought to life with pencils, watercolours, oil paint and printmaking techniques. All made in the hope we can preserve the places we love.
