Author: Janet

21 February – I’m very privileged to be back at Bathgate Park school 2 days a week for the year!

 

I really enjoy painting in the snow both here and overseas – nice to get recognition for doing such crazy things!  Aspiring Art Prize, January 2017 – Landscape Award.

The house is full with half opened boxes, cataloguing criteria, label writing, obsessing about Boosted – an arts crowdfunding site and then repacking plastic to take on its journey to the Otago Pioneer Women’s Memorial Hall!  The exhibition opens  at 6pm on 19 October and will run through Labour weekend and every weekend after.

I was interviewed by RNZ ‘Standing Room only about my plastic collection.

Standing Room Only ‘Pioneering Plastic’with 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!!