Jamie Chapman is a painter based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. He was born in the United Kingdom and immigrated with his family to New Zealand when he was 2 years old, settling and growing up in Whangarei. Jamie talks about his figurative oil paintings and how they have evolved over the years into different 'series' of portrait works. He shares how he likes to "shift it up" and challenge himself to loosen up in his painting process, partly because he doesn't like to get bored and partly...

Sofia Athineou is a full-time artist of Greek heritage, based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Her practice is mainly in glass, a medium she sees as having many sensual and optical qualities.  Surrounded by the dramatic bush of Auckland’s west coast Waitakere Ranges, it’s easy to see the inspiration behind Sofia Athineou’s incredible glass sculptures. These pieces represent vitality through light, texture and colour and appear to blend into the ever-changing landscape. Elemental forces such as...

Andrew J. Steel is a New Zealand contemporary artist with a passion for story telling. Over his career he has worked across the mediums of public art, private interiors, fine artwork, letterpress, land, body, photography and digital works.  "An artists role is to live a remarkable life and report back on it in their work." says Andrew. Andrew makes art to learn more about people & the world, then he retells these stories in his work to offer perspective and peace - both for himself and...

Tanya Blong was our very first guest on the Creative Matters podcast and lucky for us she is back 96 episodes later to talk about her artistic journey since March 2021 and how her practice has developed and evolved.  In this episode we start by talking about the Creative Matters podcast, how it has evolved over the last 2 and a half years since I first interviewed Tanya in episode 1 and my goals for the podcast going forward. Tanya talks about her upcoming solo show State of Leisure at...

Julie and Michael Freeman are award winning hyperrealistic pastel artists living in Auckland NZ. ​Julie is currently creating work with the intent of realism beyond the photograph. Her subject matter is varied, from coastal and nautical to the natural fauna and flora of NZ, but if asked she would say she has an affinity with painting animals. Michael’s subjects range from his current series of still life paintings featuring iconic New Zealand toys and objects, through to landscapes...

Toby Raine is a contemporary artist living in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. He has a distinctive approach to his work, moving large quantities of oil paint across the surface of a canvas with confident strokes, creating expressive, emotive, gestural paintings. Toby spent eleven years studying at Elam School of Fine Art in Auckland, beginning in 2006 when he was 23-years-old. Over the next decade he would go on to complete a degree, then a masters, then a doctorate in Fine Arts.  In this...

Matthew Browne is an abstract painter living in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Born in London UK, he relocated to New Zealand in 1991.  Matthew's striking geometric paintings feature sharp lines with bold, experimental colour palettes. His process starts in exploring formal relationships in colour and form and develops greater complexity as the work progresses. He has been making and showing paintings and sculptures for more than 40 years. After many years of teaching visual arts in both...

Fleur Woods is a contemporary fibre artist based in the beautiful rural village of Upper Moutere (near Nelson, New Zealand) She is surrounded by vineyards, hop farms, orchards and country gardens - it makes sense  that her work is largely inspired by nature.  Fleur describes her style of her work as contemporary stitched paintings. Coming to stitch as a mixed media artist she has taught herself a variety of embroidery techniques which generally don't follow traditional embroidery but...

Abstract artist Evan Woodruffe lives in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. He is a well known, much loved figure in the NZ art world. Evan is an artist with many threads to his practice. Most of his time is spent making work for exhibitions, projects, and commissions. He's also the “product specialist” for Gordon Harris, running workshops and writing editorial for their art stores. He is one of six Global Brand Ambassadors for both Schmincke Artist Colours and da Vinci Artist Brushes in Germany. He...

Sean Beldon is a South African born, Auckland-based artist best known for his large New Zealand landscape paintings. His style is mostly painterly with a modernist feel. For more than a decade, Sean has been photographing and painting landscapes from the far north to the deep south of Aotearoa. He finds his inspiration on road trips throughout the country and only paints places he has been. Even though his compositions will be quite abstract at times, the scene always originate with what...

Jasmine Kroeze is an an artist and textile designer living in Papamoa near Mt Maunganui. With a  background in the fashion and textile design industry, Jasmine fell into the art world through painting large scale murals as a passion project and now she applies the same creative process to her original paintings and digital artworks.  Jaz enjoys working with commercial clients and interior and product designers and she has collaborated with many well known companies such as Kathmandu and...

Elliot Love is a contemporary artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. His hyper realistic paintingsdepict cars from the 80's and 90's era set within a city's still and lifeless urban environment. Elliot works in oil on canvas, often on an unusually small scale. Many of the cars he paints are reaching the end of their lifespan - several of the cars he has painted no longer exist. With this in mind, Elliot looks to convey not just a moment in time, but the passing of an era. Elliot...

Linda Va’aelua is a full time visual artist and designer of Samoan Scottish heritage. She grew up in the West Auckland suburb of Te Atatu South and is based in Tāmaki Makaurau,  Auckland. Linda straddles the worlds of digital graphic design and fine arts. Her aim is always to bring unique perspectives to the creative landscape. Her recent work explores her identity and mixed heritage through abstract maunga forms and malu patterns. Linda strives to provoke emotions and challenge...

Frankie Meaden is a textile artist and painter from Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. She makes giant embroidery artwork from recycled materials. Frankie’s art is almost always botanical, with her large-scale sculptural pieces challenging the scale at which embroidery is usually seen. Frankie tells the story of the rich biodiversity of our world using colourful rope and recycled street banners in a way that is impactful, beautiful and sustainable. We talk about how Frankie came to work on such...

Mandy Rodger is a contemporary abstract artist based in Auckland, New Zealand. Mandy's first career was in law and in 2014 she began studying painting and drawing at Browne School of Art. Since 2017 her art practice has been her main focus and she hasn't looked back..  Mandy's abstract paintings are characterised by fluid moves and sweeping energy flows made up of spontaneous dynamic gestures. She is motivated by the way painting allows her intuition to come to the forefront of logic. ...

Matt Payne is a landscape painter living on the North Shore, in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.  Much of Matt’s work is inspired by a love of New Zealand’s landscapes and coastlines, which is reflected in dramatic compositions and depicted with vivid colour and extraordinary attention to detail.  He has a fascination with the relationship between colour, light and form and how these are perceived by the eye. Matt's career began in  high level sportsmanship where he represented New Zealand in...

Sam Mitchell is a visual artist based in the north west of Auckland, well known for her artworks painted in acrylic on perspex in reverse and watercolour paintings.  A sassy and subversive bricolage of rescued materials, painting media and eccentric imagery are utilised by Sam to explore the potency of pictures. This is a fascinating look into an amazing artist's life and work. There are lots of little gems and interesting perspectives in this episode which I'm sure you will take away...

Gavin Chai, born in 1997 in Malaysia, is a figurative painter and artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.  He specialises in the traditional technique of oil painting on wooden panels, linen and canvases and paints the world through a subtle introverted gaze. He captures everyday contemporary experiences through his careful composition and clever treatment of colour, light, and shadow. His world is idyllic yet often bound by loneliness, and colourful yet often tinged with a certain...

Marcus Hipa is a Niuean artist born and raised in Alofi, Niue Island, currently living in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa NZ. Drawing, painting and carving are some of the mediums he utilises to explore and share insights of his people's history and culture. Marcus moved to Aotearoa New Zealand at age 17, attending the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland, completing both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. His work celebrates the values, traditions, progress and sense of...

Dagmar Dyck is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, art educator and social justice advocate. She is a New Zealander of Tongan and German descent, living in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. Dagmar graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland in 1995 and was the first woman of Tongan descent to do so. She has spent the last 30 years regularly exhibiting nationally and internationally with her works being held in significant public and private collections in New...

Janet Hafoka is a visual artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, working primarily in the medium of photography.  Her art practice focuses on transience and time passing.  Her current work explores both the uncertainty and beauty in the short lived. The centuries old fascination with the ‘golden hour’ is referenced, known as the brief period after sunrise and before sunset when the sun casts a golden light.   With decaying leaves and seed pods illuminated, falling and in flight, her...

Neville Parker has been a full time sculptor and illustrator since 1995 and he opened his first art gallery in 1996. Since then he has had 7 more distinctly different galleries including 1 in Auckland, 2 in Marlborough and  4 in the Nelson/Tasman region. He has represented more than 400 artists from a variety of disciplines in Aotearoa. His most recent Gallery, Church House Gallery in Motueka, opened in April this year. Neville is interested in helping our creative community members...

Sean Hill is a Kiwi Samoan emerging visual artist from Auckland, currently based in New Plymouth. His art practice is influenced by graffiti as well as his heritage, everyday life and the natural environment and includes painting outdoors, graphic design, installation, paintings and prints on clothing. As Gallerist Scott Lawrie says " Sean Hill is one of those rare discoveries - an emerging artist who was ‘doing his own thing’ while inventing a new visual language at the same time." In...

Auckland based Aimée Ralfini is an artist, design director and the founder of Art Ache. As an artist Aimée works in the digital space, collaborating with other artists to create “campaigns” of their work.  Art Ache believes art is the most potent form of communication and artists are the litmus paper of society. It aims to make art and culture part of the everyday conversation and aims to assist intellectual and creative development, for the betterment of the local community and...

UK born painter Neal Palmer immigrated to New Zealand in 1998 and has been painting full time ever since. Through the exploration of the New Zealand environment he has discovered subjects that evoke strong emotional responses such as Harakeke (NZ flax). He is inspired by the natural forms, composition, spaces and shapes, as well as nostalgic references his botannical subjects provide. Neal blends visual languages within his practice, exploring how the languages of colour, texture,...