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Tracey Currington ‘Hydrostatic’ Painting Merit award: First time winner Tracey Currington’s experimental style includes encaustic (hot wax) painting but she says this abstract work was about exploring layering in acrylics. Susannah Law, ‘Mokopuna’, Figurative Merit award: Red Beach artist Sue Law says painting her husband Michael Murray and eldest granddaughter Indie took a long time – she worked on it, on and off, for more than a year. “I was very fussy about getting it right,” she says. The one time she didn’t work on it was during lockdown, when she says she painted the house instead! Lizzy Dickie, ‘Octopus’, Watercolour Merit award: This is the third time that Manly artist Lizzy Dickie has won this award. ‘Octopus’ is part of the Isolation Series that she completed in the first lockdown. “I felt like I was doing a million tasks at once, which was where the octopus and its many arms came in,” she says. Lizzie also makes her own frames.
Former Orewa College art teacher and artist Graeme Irving took a close look at the entrants in this year’s Members’ Merit Awards at Estuary Arts Centre over the recent lockdown.
He was this year’s judge, and had 250 entries by 94 artists to assess – something he describes as “an enormous task”. He says the quality was very high, and there was an impressive range of work – not just the ones that won prizes.
The Premier winner was Victoria Haldane of Torbay, with a landscape oil painting called ‘Overcast’.
Three local artists also won Merit awards (see above).
The exhibition of all the works is on until September 27 at the arts centre in Western Reserve, Orewa.
