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Meet the Artists of Arts Canterbury - Therese Boustead
Russley Events
This is my fourth time exhibiting at the Russley Village and I’m really looking forward to it.
My career was in science, tertiary mathematics and statistical analysis. Nearing retirement, I decided to take up art as a way of capturing nature while my husband spent time taking photographs whenever we travelled around New Zealand.
I had never done any art at school, but always had an interest in crafts. On my retirement, my husband and I travelled around Europe for several months, beginning with a week’s art workshop in Barcelona where I was introduced to plein-air watercolour painting by a resident artist. Since then, I have attended a watercolour workshop in Portugal and experienced painting in Spain, Italy and Turkey. I spent my first year of art learning to sketch before developing my own interpretation of watercolour painting. I now find painting in watercolour to be all-consuming, peaceful and tranquil.
Although I retired six years ago, my first two years was spent learning to sketch and paint with watercolour, so I didn’t consider myself to be an artist until about four years ago.
I only paint in watercolour and would describe my style as representational, detailed, peaceful, softly colourful, tranquil and calming. I use background colour to highlight the elegance and fragility of nature.
When I started art, I found joy in painting landscapes before moving to a negative painting technique depicting images of fruit from our garden. For the last two years, I have concentrated on New Zealand birds and landscapes. With the bird paintings, it is the eyes that are the most important. For landscapes, I always love to include water, so many of my landscapes include lakes and rivers. Routinely, I take my camera with me everywhere I go, and I look for inspiration in the beauty around us.
If I had a favourite topic, it would probably be New Zealand birds. I could spend all day observing the waxeyes, finches, and fantails in our garden. It isn’t matter of having a favourite piece, but rather constantly challenging myself, to learn and to improve. The focus of each art piece is to conquer a challenge that I want to work on. For example, I painted an image of my neighbour’s white dog on a white background, since white on white is a huge challenge. Once I was satisfied with the finished painting, I would move onto the next challenge that I set myself.
I also do all my own framing and will only use the best quality paper, paint and framing materials.
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