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Living in a brand new part of Millwater, Catherine Mitchell’s garden is not near the coast, but she has created a tropical and coastal feel on her small plot with her plant and hard landscaping choices.
“A lot of the gardens around here are very orderly, but mine is not,” she says. “I get given things or find something I love and some grow, some don’t. The garden is an escape and a good place. No matter how tired I am after working in it, there is that sense of achievement.”
Catherine discovered her love of gardening relatively recently, but she has painted for around 25 years, with flowers being a common subject for her work.
“I learned to paint by happy accident, and trial and error,” Catherine says.
In the 1990s she owned a craft shop in Whangaparaoa, where she could work surrounded by colour – art materials and fabric.
“I like colourful things, and I always have hibiscus and bird of paradise plants in my gardens.”
These often pop up in her paintings too. “I don’t paint thought provoking, ‘unusual’ stuff. I have been told my paintings are uplifting, and that is a real compliment.”
Catherine teaches creative acrylics at Estuary Arts centre but her current exhibition there, A Coastal Garden, is her first.
It features around 20 works, including bold abstracts. “I like to know it’s a painting, with brush strokes, not a photo,” she says.
Catherine hopes to have more exhibitions and is already thinking about trees as a possible theme for a future show.
A Coastal Garden is on now at Estuary Arts Centre in Orewa until October 20.
