Sofia Athineou is a full-time artist of Greek heritage, based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Her practice is mainly in glass, a medium she sees as having many sensual and optical qualities.  

 Surrounded by the dramatic bush of Auckland’s west coast Waitakere Ranges, it’s easy to see the inspiration behind Sofia Athineou’s incredible glass sculptures. These pieces represent vitality through light, texture and colour and appear to blend into the ever-changing landscape. Elemental forces such as wind, fire and water and the constant movement and natural patterns of these elements are captured in her sculptures.  

 Sofia talks about how she adjusted to NZ life when she immigrated here at the age of 23 from Greece, how she became a full time artist after raising her children, the work she has exhibited at sculpture shows around Aotearoa NZ, the challenges she faces of living on a single artist income, pricing her work and the many hats she has to wear to keep the money coming in. 

 She takes us step by step through her glass casting process using open cast moulds and explains why she prefers not to polish her work.
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Sofia Athineou - Glass Artist

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Rachael Errington is a visual artist living, working and exhibiting in both New Zealand and Australia. She has been showing her paintings professionally for over 20 years, and has had 40 major solo exhibitions to date. Rachael grew up living in the middle of an English wood, where she and her brother spent most of their time making dens and treehouses. It is undoubtedly this experience that created her fascination with painting trees. Her work is inspired by colours in nature and the way light filters through flora, creating emotive connections for the viewer, encouraging them to ‘feel’ something that is peaceful, wistful and calming. It was such a pleasure meeting the wonderfully vivacious Rachael. Her positive outlook on life and her approach to her art business and painting practice is really inspiring. She has some great tips for artists and valuable insights for us all after experiencing a traumatic health event in 2020.  Rachel goes into fascinating depth about her painting practice: how she paints her entire canvas black before starting a painting; how her underpainting becomes a simple landscape with a light point which are beautiful in themselves; how she creates the sculptural elements in her trees; how she adds in the light rays and mists at the end and why she loves to paint big. You can see her current solo show Memoirs from Nature on now at Art Bay Gallery in Queenstown, running from June 19th - July 3rd 2024.

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Rachael Errington - Visual artist

Tim Jones is a contemporary painter born in the UK and living in Matakana New Zealand. He creates bold abstract paintings through the use of strong gestural mark making. Driven by inquiry, and with evocative reference to the natural environment, colour and painterly form are intertwined and steeped in rhythm and movement. Tim talks about how he has always liked to draw and paint and also take photographs and how his background travelling extensively, diving and working on super yachts has ultimately informed his art practice. He shares his intuitive painting process, the worlds he creates in his work and what they mean to him.  We talk about NFT scams and the merits and downsides of social media, how his identity has been stolen more than once on Instagram and the difficulty he has had resolving this issue. He shares how he sometimes experiences imposter syndrome as a self taught artist and how he deals with that. We discuss Tim's current solo show Quo Vadis at Parnell Gallery in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland and we explore some of the works within the exhibition. Quo Vadis is on now and runs until June 25th 2024. Text Mandy - leave your name and email so I can get back to you! Support the Show. Ngā mihi, thanks for listening! 

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Tim Jones: Contemporary painter

Zoë Nash is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. Her brightly coloured, abstract works explore a slow and mindful accumulation of repeated and highly detailed mark making.  Reflecting her love of nature, Zoë’s works increasingly draw on selected plant and flower motifs as inspiration. Frequently initiated by things seen, things spoken, or things remembered, narrative and nostalgia are also used to trigger personal connection with viewers.  After taking some art classes with Zoë at Browne School of Art, it was a real privilege to talk to her and get to know her and her practice a little better. Zoë speaks about the 'round about way' she came to design and the fine arts arena and her challenging time completing a masters degree in fine arts without having an art practice at the time, and how she didn't make art for 4 years after this experience. We discuss her identity crisis at the age of 30 as a British born woman who had lived in NZ for as long as she'd lived in the UK and how this translated into her fine arts study, which focused on identity, the use of autobiography and the role of female narratives. Zoë talks about how renting her own art studio finally kick started her art practice again and why her work became so connected to nature. She shares the ideas behind the presence of dots and repeated marks in her work and how that can be therapeutic and sometimes reflects her own personal stories. AND Zoë has the best list yet of artists and reasons why they have inspired her and informed her practice.

 Text Mandy - leave your name and email so I can get back to you! Support the Show. Ngā mihi, thanks for listening! 

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Zoë Nash: Multi-disciplinary artist

Belinda Griffiths is a conceptual figurative artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. Her work lies within the disciplines of painting and printmaking and explores the expressive power of the gestural mark.  When coupled with depictions of the human form, this tension between mark and form has the potential to dig deeper and communicate something of the human experience that becomes instinctive and visceral. Belinda's work is an ongoing exploration of that potential. In this episode we talk about how she came to emigrate from South Africa to New Zealand at the age of 18, how she started her career in design and then made the switch to full time artist. We discuss how she discovered printmaking and what she loves about monotypes, why she likes to create monotypes as well as paintings and her printmaking process.  We talk about the different residencies Belinda has done and how they have influenced her work, how she knows when a work is finished and successful, how she manages the push and pull between marks and form. And how she sees her process as a metaphor for her work and why she doesn't like to share all parts of her process. Text Mandy - leave your name and email so I can get back to you! Support the Show. Ngā mihi, thanks for listening! 

If you'd like to support the show with a $3, $5, $8 or $10 monthly donation to help with production costs, please follow this link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1713946/supporters/new 

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Belinda Griffiths - Conceptual figurative artist

Clinton Christian (aka Clint© or CC'd) is an award winning contemporary New Zealand artist based in Hamilton New Zealand.   His graphic style, themes and mediums reflect his personality - fun, bright, shiny and often nostalgic with a love of all things 70s and 80s. Clint initially gained a big following with his animal pop portrait series ‘Animal Instinct’ during 2020/21 and he has recently developed a new collection of work ‘Retrovision’ that dives into his youthful nostalgic memories of the 1970’s -80’s. Clint loves making people smile and is super passionate about what he does. In this episode we talk about Clint's journey from architectural designer to full time artist and how well received his work has been right from when he started painting only 6 years ago. He talks about a pivotal light bulb moment in 2018 after a tough year when he decided to leave his job and start creating, even though he initially didn't know what form this would take. We discuss how he once thought he wasn't 'creative' because he would draw what he sees and didn't feel he had his own ideas - ideas is defintely not something he is short of today! Clint has a very entrepreneurial approach to his art career. He talks about some of his tricks and techniques he has for promoting and selling his work, connecting with artists and gallerists and building a loyal following. He unpacks his painting and sculptural practice and goes into great depth about his process, from sourcing and using resin and how he builds his pieces to the way he transfers the text in his Title Deeds series and his favourite paints to use. Such a good listen!
https://www.creativematters.co.nz/post/creative-matters-with-clint-christian

 Text Mandy - leave your name and email so I can get back to you! Support the Show. Ngā mihi, thanks for listening! 

If you'd like to support the show with a $3, $5, $8 or $10 monthly donation to help with production costs, please follow this link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1713946/supporters/new 

Follow us on Instagram
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Learn more about the podcast
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Please rate and review our show to help others find us https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/creative-matters/id1561034043

Sofia Athineou - Glass Artist

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