Arts Trail for Taranaki

Weekend activity

 

Over the weekend we joined the Taranaki Arts Trail, which involves dozens of artists opening their studios to the public at the same time.

 

One of Sharyn's paintings has been on our wall
for ten years or so.

Here is the link:

 

http://taranakiartstrail.co.nz/

 

On Friday, with some of our Auckland relatives who were visiting, we visited two studios in North Taranaki: Sharyn Hoskins and John MacLean.

 

 

Sharyn was one of the owners of our house when we bought it, and was responsible for the lovely colours we so enjoyed until we repainted recently. She has a studio just the other side of Urenui, set in lovely spacious grounds.

 

John is a long-established Taranaki painter; his studio is just at the beginning of the road to Mike and Rosemary Kurigers' farm, just by the Mimi School, where Andrew attended for the first years of his schooling.

 

Of all the artists we visited this time, John was the one who really excited us the most. John also has a painting in the current PukeAriki exhibition: Home Work.

 

On Saturday we visited the Art Centre on the corner of Pendarves Street opposite Central School, and were especially interested in the paintings of Leila Hunter. Leila was a colleague of mine at the hospital when I worked there, and is a distant relative of Margaret's (one of her ancestors was a Barriball). Leila used to work at Tainui Rest Home, and has published a book of portraits of residents and their sayings, lifelike and at the same time humorous.

 

Leila has recently been on a tour of Israel and had a series of canvasses on that subject, most spectacularly a great landscape of Jerusalem featuring the Dome of the Rock.

 

From there we went on to The Gables, which is a gallery run by the Society of Arts in Brooklands Park. They were displaying works by several painters, all of whom were worth looking at, especially Fern Parmentier's work.

 

Sunday we walked next door to the studio of Derek Hughes, who produces high quality prints of his beautiful photos. We bought a copy of his little book of photos of the Te Rewa Rewa Bridge.

 

Then we went up the hill to WITT (the Western Institute of Technology), where several artists have studios. We saw the work of three painters and one lady who makes assemblages from old watches.

 

Then we walked down to the home of Anthea Stayt, who works in pottery and acrylic paint. I was specially taken by her abstract backgrounds with red pottery poppies.

 

In the afternoon we saw the work of Amanda Hewlitt and Ann Holliday in Buller Street, Joyce Young, an old acquaintance who does the most delightful pottery, and Claire Sadler, who is a stone sculptor, and then finally, Jacqueline Elley, who works in paint with landscapes, and also in processed flax.

 

What a feast of really interesting, and sometimes exciting, art works in a variety of media; too much to take in in one weekend. We are already talking about the next such Trail next year!