KATHY WATSON
NEW ZEALAND ARTIST
My Creative Journey
Kathy entered Whitecliffe Art School, Auckland in mid-life after some 30 years in a nursing career and bringing up a family, together with sketching and painting whenever time allowed. Her work was influenced by the families love of sailing on the Hauraki Gulf in Auckland.
She completed a two year Fine Arts Diploma in 1990/91 at Whitecliffe Art College in Auckland.
For three decades her work (mainly Marine paintings) was exhibited in Auckland galleries, including Art by the Sea and Art of this World galleries in Devonport, and the Studio of Contemporary Art, Newmarket. Highlights of those years were working as a resident artist at Lake House Arts Centre in Takapuna, and organising the Stars and Stripes gallery in Auckland's Viaduct Basin during the 2000 Americas Cup Regatta.
She recently moved to the rural Waikato with her husband to live near family, built a new studio and embarked on the 'Wide Open Skies' series depicting rural New Zealand's landscape and gardens, finding it a great way of becoming acclimatised.
This has been followed by a colourful series of tondo canvases - see New Work. This was a follow on from the Narrative Series exhibited in Auckland with some success. Her work is held in private and corporate collections in N.Z. and Overseas, including Carter Holt Harvey, New York; Graeme Hart; Telecom NZ; Dennis Conner, Stars and Stripes Americas Cup Syndicate; and the Prada Americas Cup Syndicate.
Awards: Finalist Telecom Art Awards 1992
The New Zealanders Toss Woolaston and James Nairn, the English artists J.M.W. Turner and John Constable, the Americans, Edward Hopper and Winslow Homer, and the Australian Heidelberg Group. |