1997–2005 — Holding Beauty

My artistic practice began with a feeling before I had the words to understand it. In the years before 1997, my work was intuitive and instinctive. There was a strong sense of energy and movement within it, something was being expressed long before I had any conscious understanding of what it was, but the work seemed to know something that I did not.

My formal artistic journey began in 1997, when I entered the Bachelor of Design programme. The first year was a foundation in creative practice, where I explored different ways of making and discovered what I was drawn towards. I initially imagined I would become a graphic designer, but as I sat at the keyboard this did not feel right. I was also very drawn to architecture and photography, but again I felt removed from the process of creating with my hands. I was looking for something more direct, a way of working with materials and being physically involved in the making. Three-dimensional design offered something different. It sat between product design and sculpture, physical, tactile and sculptural, but with purpose. I could work directly with materials and make something that existed in space.

During this period, I was introduced to a wide range of materials and processes. I learned to weld, turn materials on a lathe, work with cement and fibreglass, construct electrical circuits for lighting and became familiar with processes such as anodising aluminium. I was discovering what materials could do, how they behaved and how they could be brought together. Experimentation became part of the learning itself, and I became increasingly interested in what might happen when materials were used beyond their expected purpose, what could be embedded, suspended, transformed, combined or preserved.

When I encountered polyester casting resin, I was immediately captivated. It was translucent and dimensional. It could hold things in place while allowing them to remain visible. I began experimenting with its possibilities, measuring resin, colour and hardener, testing temperature and curing times, introducing natural and found materials and learning through every success and failure. I became particularly interested in nature, rocks, moss, branches, grasses, seed pods, movement, water and the traces left by natural processes. I wanted to capture something of their beauty and hold it within the resin. I knew this much at the time. I didn't yet understand why holding beauty felt so important to me.

My work from this period was described at the time as being inspired by nature and by unseen energies, wind, light, shadows, movement and flow. Looking back, I can see how closely the physical and emotional worlds were already intertwined within the work, although I didn't have the language to understand that connection then.

By 2005, another transition was already underway. I had spent years in Woodhill, Auckland, relocating and renovating a 1910 bungalow on five acres, and was now moving five hours north to twenty-five acres in Peria Valley, Northland. I created Moving On as a farewell exhibition to the Rodney region. The title was literal. I was leaving a place, a landscape and a chapter of my life behind. The exhibition brought together the work I had created during those years, work deeply rooted in the natural environment and in my fascination with resin's ability to create a multilayered, three-dimensional world. At the time, I understood the work as an attempt to capture something beautiful from the world around me. Only much later did I understand what else I had been trying to hold.