Artists

Amber Crossman is a contemporary artist based in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty, creating bold, expressive work that sits between abstraction and expressionism. Following a significant personal loss, she returned to her practice with renewed urgency, reshaping her connection to time and creativity. Largely self-taught, her practice is instinctive and emotionally driven, merging the human form with expressive colour, energetic mark-making, and layered texture. She focuses on capturing presence—movement and emotion—over perfect representation. The female form is central to her work, celebrating lived experience and the stories it holds. Her palette is strongly influenced by nature, the vivid light, and dramatic sunsets.

Like sunlight through open windows, Angela Maritz’s paintings invite you to pause and breathe. Guided by intuition rather than form, her acrylic works explore a quiet dialogue between belonging and becoming. With roots in South Africa and the UK, and now living in New Zealand, Angela has exhibited internationally and collaborated across art and design, from New York and London to Sydney. Her recent works drift toward grounded tones, colours evoking presence and ease. These paintings are an invitation to slow down, reconnect, and feel at home in yourself, meeting you gently where words cannot.

Anna is a British born conservation artist who uses her work to draw attention to environmental issues and the efforts by conservationist and scientists to address these. She trained under Judy Curnow, a protégé of the acclaimed Tim Wilson. Her signature style combines Fairmined 24-carat gold leaf with oil paint glazing techniques inspired by the Old Masters and developed by Tim. Living on a rural lifestyle block in a predator-free zone, she is surrounded daily by the thriving native birdlife that inspires her work.

Anna’s artwork embodies a sense of beauty and peace, exploring arrangements of urban nature and wild flora. Her paint carvings are rich and intricate, with lines carefully carved into a thick base of layered acrylic paint, creating a beautiful handmade aesthetic, with the surface texture drawing viewers in to explore it from close up and at a distance. Anna’s professional background in graphic design informs her work: she prides herself on creating carefully considered and balanced pieces of art, with superb attention to detail and finely honed carving skills. She enjoys the simplicity of working in duotone and exploring the possibilities of what can be achieved with positive and negative space.

Spotlighting local architecture and community spaces, Anna invites us to reflect on all the memories and stories these places hold. She illustrates digitally with simplified lines, enhanced symmetry, and soft, complementary tones, resulting in a series of limited-edition prints. Rather unusually, she creates using Microsoft PowerPoint, a common presentation software that has not been developed with artists in mind. You wouldn’t know this at first glance, but behind the scenes her process is more akin to collage, using a simple toolkit of shapes to slowly construct the desired image.

Anya Petrukhina's art has always been her silent liaison between emotion and expression. She has grown into appreciating nature's beauty through her art, while including personal or global motifs. Anya draws inspiration from Impressionism, 1970s Sci-fi and Russian Realism. As a child, she has studied in Art School in the South-East of Moscow. Anya was personally taught by Stanislav Brusilov, a renowned oil painter. Now, she is in pursuit of higher education and establishing her art career.

Frankie Meaden, working under the artist name Beautifully Frank, is a New Zealand contemporary artist exploring the scale, tactility and expressive possibilities of fibre and embroidery. Based in Auckland, Frankie has been a professional artist since 2016, developing a distinctive approach she calls Giant Embroidery - transforming traditional embroidery into large-scale, architectural works that sit between textile, sculpture and installation. Her vibrant, tactile works use layering, repetition and meticulous hand construction to create bold pieces that respond to the character and scale of their surroundings. Her practice spans gallery exhibitions, public art, commercial spaces and private commissions in New Zealand and internationally. Frankie often incorporates unconventional and repurposed materials, including recycled rope and street banners, bringing unexpected texture, colour and character to her work. Through scale, colour and an obsessive attention to detail, Frankie pushes the boundaries of what embroidery can be.

BEMODERN (aka Paul Darragh) is a Mount Maunganui–based artist whose work explores colour, geometry and spatial perception. Working with bold, graphic compositions, he creates paintings, murals and sculptural works that behave like architectural surfaces interrupted by portals and spatial openings. His recent VOID series investigates how colour relationships can shift the viewer’s sense of depth and space. Alongside his studio practice he works internationally as a motion graphics designer with design studios in New York. His work has been exhibited across Aotearoa, Seoul, Melbourne and New York.

Blake is an award winning artist and qualified engineer with over 13 years of experience, combining technical precision with creative expression. Based in rural Pukekawa, North Waikato, he brings a grounded, down-to-earth approach to both life and art. Working primarily with powder coated steel, stainless steel, corten steel, and natural materials, Blake is driven by the challenge of pushing steel into new forms. Inspired by nature, current events, and sentimental ideas, his sculptures are thoughtful and enduring. He values the collaborative process, connecting with clients and translating their stories into meaningful, high quality artworks designed to stand the test of time.

Brad Novak (aka New Blood Pop) is a leading urban artist whose work sits sharply at the nexus between fine art and street art. His practice deals with 'The Digital Dilemma': “I believe those of us who remember first-hand what it was like before ‘the internet’ have a duty to future generations. Many of my artworks continue to be a commentary, and warning, about the challenges with an ever-increasing technological age”. Novak is the first artist in NZ’s history to exhibit simultaneously with both the global pop and street art superstars such as Warhol, Haring, Brainwash and BANKSY (Toronto, 2015).

The winner of the Eden Park Landscape Award 2025, and working in diverse mediums, Mortimer expresses his connection with the Earth in series that range in style from abstraction to photorealism.

Caleb Kuita is a Māori artist specialising in whakairo (traditional Māori wood carving). Born and raised in Hawke’s Bay, with his whakapapa to Whangārā and Tikitiki on the East Coast. His practice is driven by a deep appreciation for Māori art forms and a desire to master them over time. Inspired by artists such as Steve Solomon, Todd Couper, and Mr G, Caleb values clean, refined craftsmanship with a contemporary sensibility. After serving 10 years in the Royal New Zealand Navy, he is now pursuing his long-held aspiration to study whakairo at Te Puia, NZMACI.

Cathryn Ryan: Capturing the Kiwi Narrative: Cathryn Ryan captures a positive yet quirky vision of New Zealand identity through her art. She uses vessels to contain and reflect aspects of our shared life, offering viewers an accessible, clean, and green perspective. These symbolic containers include the egg, signifying potential and fragility, and the enamel mug, often evoking happy, common memories. Ryan selects these and other objects for their relatability, shared experience, or memorial significance, inviting viewers to engage with the familiar stories woven into her vibrant pieces.

Born in South Africa and raised in New Zealand, Cayleen Bester is a digital illustrator with a background in 2D animation. She combines cinematic and traditional painting techniques to create her work, using pencils and watercolour to thumbnail her concepts before hand-painting the final composition on an iPad or drawing tablet. Her illustrations are inspired by the natural world and her curiosity for the creatures we share it with, incorporating their unique personalities and stories into her paintings. In each piece, she layers personal experiences and emotion, drawing connections between the human and animal experience in a way that feels enchanting.

"Burtsy", a Taranaki-based artist, creates vibrant, detail-rich artworks inspired by colour, playfulness, and the beauty of everyday materials. Passionate about sustainability, Burtsy incorporates recycled or repurposed elements into the creative process, transforming what others might discard into joyful visual stories. The style is bold, lively, and full of intricate details that invite viewers to look a little closer and discover something new each time. Inspired by nature, the pieces celebrate creativity, colour, and the fun of making art with purpose and joy.

Chris Melville is a New Zealand abstract photographer whose work transforms light, fabric, and texture into meditative landscapes that blur the line between the real and the imagined. Through long exposures and subtle movement, he captures the fleeting interplay of material and emotion, inviting viewers into a state of quiet reflection. Each image feels both intimate and vast – evoking places that seem familiar yet unplaceable. Melville’s work explores the poetry of perception and the beauty found in transience, offering a contemplative pause in a world that moves too fast.

Christian Nicolson is a New Zealand artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores history, nostalgia, and the natural world around him. Influenced by his coastal upbringing in the 1980s, his work is marked by expressive mark-making, vivid colour, and conceptual play. Nicolson’s large-scale sculptures and emotive paintings are rooted in freedom, humour, and personal history. A former designer, he brings visual clarity and narrative energy to each piece. Recurring themes include childhood, identity, nudity, sci-fi, and the passage of time. Christian has a sense of humour and often expresses it in his work. With a strong exhibition history and works held in public and private collections, Nicolson continues to forge a distinctive, enduring artistic voice.

As a child growing up in rural Southland Clare found solice drawing and painting, it gave her ways to express herself with words. She seeks to capture the dynamic interplay between how we see the would and how we use it. Her love of colour and form evokes emotion in us which she hopes will make us all reflect on our own relationship with our land and each other.

The preservation of her childhood memories constitutes the raw material from which Briceño creates her pictorial work, which is shaped through the repetition and superposition of layers of colour that fit together, revealing forms and memories of home and nature. Constanza currently works in her home studio in Papamoa. In the intimacy of this space, the artist reconstructs and narrates passages from her memory, drawing upon moments, people, and places from the past that intertwine in an accumulation of layers and veils, where the intimacy of living spaces, lived spaces, and remembered places is interwoven in her works.

Dalene was born in South Africa and studied at the University of South Africa, Pretoria. She moved to New Zealand in 1997. Dalene’s canvases have been described as being rich, warm, and easy on the eye. They are vivid in colour, harmonious in form, and express a rarely found vitality. Passionate about experimentation with texture, colour, and different media, she is able to produce a unique and compelling finish to these styles. She portrays the people, places, and objects which link her inextricably with her surroundings. “I try to impose a visual and emotional experience in my paintings and favour emotion over precision.”

A painter working in oils, acrylics, and spray paint, Dan is a full-time father, husband, and artist supporting a wife and three daughters. He is currently dividing his time between Aotearoa and Czechia.

Deb Fuller is an Artist whose work is celebrated for its unique blend of Photographic Imagery and Mixed Media Painting. A full-time Artist since 2000 and based in the rural community of Little River (Banks Peninsula). Establishing a signature style, her work merges the captured reality of ordinary moments with painted, moody atmospheric backgrounds. Debs work often explores the intersection of nostalgia and recollection. Her works often featuring solitary dwellings, vacant chairs and ordinary objects. Capturing moments of calm and stillness, light and cast shadow. Viewers are invited to impart their own meaning, often with underlying tones of ambiguity and evoking solace in the simple.

Based in Tauranga, New Zealand, Deb of Primrose Yellow Photography captures the beauty of floral treasures. After a long career in floral design, she transitioned into photography five years ago, using her design background to create still-life compositions that celebrate their exquisite colour, form, and light, offering images that are both visually striking and quietly emotive. Deb's photographs invite viewers to pause and appreciate the subtle beauty of the natural world. Her framed and unframed work is available at The Mandarine Tree Gallery in Gordonton, Hamilton.

Dessa is a Coromandel based glass mosaic and mixed media artist whose work explores emotional architecture, cultural memory and the reclamation of personal truth. Known for her vibrant colour palettes and intricate layering, she creates contemporary pieces that merge Pasifika heritage, lived experience and bold abstraction. Her practice spans mosaic, painting and sculptural forms, with works exhibited nationally and internationally and held in private collections. Driven by resilience and storytelling, Dessa transforms challenge into beauty, creating artworks that honour identity, self-determination and the power of speaking one’s truth.

Didi Chapman was born in the Czech Republic, and recognized early on in her life that art was an important part of her identity. She was specifically attracted to drawing the natural environment using pencil and Indian ink and modeling a small sculptures from clay as a child. Didi’s passion for creative art developed into 20 years as a graphic designer owning a graphic design company in Prague and winning a coveted contract producing the corporate identity for an international insurance company. Moving to Australia in 2003 Didi continued her career as an international graphic designer while attending the National Art School in Sydney learning new art skills such as etching and printmaking. Her passion for drawing with Indian ink continued and she was able to hold a successful solo exhibition in Sydney in 2007 and in the Taupo Museum, NZ in 2015. Since shifting to New Zealand in 2013 and setting up home in Taupo with her kiwi husband and their two sons, Didi become a highly valued member of Active Arts Taupo where she curated their annual exhibitions for 5 years and became a chairperson of Creative Clay Group. She became a member of the Ceramics Association of New Zealand in 2018.

Dita Angeles comes from a strong background in portraiture, which evolved over the years into an existential examination of social presentation. She specialises in conceptual photorealist oil paintings and especially likes to use themes centred around behaviour, ego, identity, and anonymity. Angeles has been a professional artist since 2002 and has spent much of her career living in various places around Asia Pacific before returning to New Zealand in 2023. She is represented by Boyd-Dunlop Gallery, NZ, and Lethbridge Gallery, AU.

Don is inspired by the natural world, from the microscopic to the massive. Don love organic, tactile structures and forms, using solid timbers, or steel or plywood to create his visions of those natural designs. He loves designing and making pieces that often end up different to how he imagined at the start. That's his process, working things out as they go.

Ehetere Rua (Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Cornwall) is an interdisciplinary artist using creativity as a means of connection, co-dreaming, communication, and becoming. Based on the outskirts of Tāmaki Makaurau, her practice cross-pollinates itself as an accomplished street dancer, colourful surrealist painter, and distinctive designer. In the realm of painting, her colourful surrealist compositions have been exhibited in creative spaces across Aotearoa and as part of creative community ensembles. Her most recent project is directing, designing, and dancing ENIGMA, a short dance film that won People’s Choice at the 2025 Aotearoa Street Dance Film Festival – signalling her emergence as a powerful storyteller.

Wellington artist Em Wafer is known for her award-winning surreal dreamscapes and microcosmic worlds. She exhibits locally and internationally and has collectors worldwide. Her work addresses the subconscious, where a multitude of perspectives exist: the unique and the universal. Glimpses of places deeply felt yet never fully articulated connect us all and allow us room for reflection.

Esther Bunning has been creating beautiful, distinctive images for over 30 years. She has a gift for seeing the unseen, revealing the small, beautiful details that make people and places feel alive and real. Known for her artistic experimentation, Esther brings a playful edge to her photography. A Nikon Ambassador for New Zealand and an Asukabook Ambassador for Australasia, her art is recognised locally and internationally.

Esther is a full-time artist who exhibits both in New Zealand and overseas and has sold over 800 artworks worldwide. Her mixed media inventions, using hand-painted shattered glass and LED lights, are now dominating her most popular works. She has lived in many places but now resides in the beautiful Bay of Islands. Her works are often dreamlike and melodramatic, exploring how we remember places and our emotional links to them. She has a strong connection to nature, and her intense emotional energy can be felt in her paintings. When not painting, Esther loves hiking in the hills, and she volunteers for Land Search and Rescue.

FLOX is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most recognisable artistic voices — a self-made creative whose signature stencil style and vibrant, nature-inspired works have evolved from the street to the studio, and now into a globally minded lifestyle brand. With roots in urban art and a deep reverence for the land, FLOX bridges the worlds of fine art, public art, and functional design. Her murals, workshops, and collections, spanning limited-edition prints, private commissions, personal stationery, and luxury accessories, are a celebration of bold colour, cultural connection, and artistic integrity. FLOX represents a modern, elevated take on New Zealand creativity — crafted with care, grounded in story, and designed to stand proudly on the world stage.

Fraser “Fraz” Williamson is an addlepated messer-upper of perfectly good art boards, which suffer the indignity of his being “at sea” both daily and in the darkling hours. Dreams of the ocean, large swimming mammals, and tigers appear, along with heterodox ruminations on Life and life. He works in acrylic on board mostly and is laughed at by his “big brush” contemporaries regarding the Dalí-esque one-hair brushes he can tend to. However, his works adorn the walls of Sweden, Australia, America, Spain, and London, and his narrative dreamscapes dazzle with their colourful liveliness (unless they’re monotones, of course!).

Gabriele Marangoni is an Italian chef and painter whose art practice has become a natural extension of his creative life in the kitchen. After years of plating and composing dishes, he became drawn to the visual effect created by dripping and swirling sauces on the plate. This curiosity for gesture and flow led to experiments with paint and canvas. Inspired by the energy of abstract expressionism and the freedom of action painting, Gabriele works instinctively, often using only his hands and fluid enamel paint. His developing process, often guided by music, is shaped by rhythm, gravity, and motion.

Waikato-based artist Gaen creates geometric abstractions and landscapes that distil nature’s splendour into minimalist form. Working in acrylic on board and canvas, he begins with landscape photography, selecting regional colour palettes and reducing each scene to its essential structure, echoing Cubist principles. Inspired by New Zealand’s dramatic terrains—especially dawn and dusk light—he has travelled widely, also drawing on iconic landscapes abroad. His works appear in private collections across New Zealand and internationally.

Grace Wilson is an Auckland based abstract artist and the creative force behind Sunday Grace. Working primarily with textured mediums and layered neutral palettes, she creates contemporary artworks that explore light, stillness, movement, and emotional connection through organic form and depth. Her work is designed to bring a sense of calm, warmth, and grounding into contemporary interiors through sculptural texture and timeless, understated palettes. Alongside her creative practice, Grace has a professional background in paediatric healthcare, a role that has shaped her understanding of human resilience, emotion, and connection.

The common thread that influences all of Hayley Elliott-Kernot’s creative work is stories. Reading, telling, and re-telling tales has always been an integral part of her life — from her love of reading and creating fantasy worlds as a child, to illustrating children’s books, to her continuing passion for mythology, history, and legends. Portraits are the main subject of her artwork because she is drawn to faces. A person’s face is like the cover of a book, concealing years’ worth of stories intricately entwined to weave the fabric of who they are. In every human there are countless strands — love, hope, pain, fear, friendship — and the face becomes the doorway to the greatest and most complex tale of all.

Heather Wilson is a self-taught artist based in Napier, New Zealand, whose work radiates joy and playfulness. Known for her distinctive use of texture, bold colours, and a touch of nostalgia, Heather’s art stands out with a 3D quality that captivates viewers. Her creations are crafted with acrylic and mixed media on canvas and board, often featuring resin effects that bring a vibrant depth to each piece. Influenced by the geometric patterns and lively spirit of the 1960s and 70s, Heather draws inspiration from her own happy and carefree childhood, infusing her work with elements of Kiwiana and iconic imagery.

Ingrid Boot is a professional artist living in Auckland, New Zealand, mainly creating figurative oil paintings. Inspired by the fashion photographers found in vintage Vogue magazines, her work always shows beauty and timeless elegance.

Jane Blackmore has found her passion for art in nature for more than 30 years. Her paintings—whether flowers, abstractions, or landscapes—are predominantly about stopping and simply being in the moment. She has a love for oil paint and the way it moves and glows, a constant fascination that continues to inspire her. It is this quality that drives her to further explore colour, form, and movement throughout her work. Jane seeks to capture a timeless quality in her paintings—something that becomes a meaningful part of people's lives. She hopes her work invites viewers to observe and engage differently each time they encounter it, inhaling the beauty of something that has been created.

Janice Napper is a contemporary Auckland artist whose work celebrates the vitality, rhythm, and spirit of the natural world. As an early adopter of resin-based mediums and liquid acrylics, Janice’s distinctive fluid painting style is often experimental, combining spontaneous abstraction with refined realism to capture the beauty and essence of nature in motion. Originally from Otago, she is deeply inspired by the southern landscapes, light, and beauty of Aotearoa. Themes of renewal and connection weave through her artworks, capturing nature in motion — from cascading waterfalls and birds in flight to the delicate shimmer of native flora.

Janine Whitelaw is a northland based artist who has been a successful professional painter for the last 20years. Her works range from landscapes to vibrant blooms , with many featuring native birds and fauna . Inspired by the natural beauty that surrounds us, her work is intuitive and aims to evoke the viewers own journey of emotions and memories.

Jan Oram loves extending an animal’s personality through fashion and accessories — imagining what they would wear if they could!

Jasmine communicates the places she has been, from her physical and metaphysical being, into abstracts created with natural intuition, travelling through a serendipitous journey. There is a force which guides her from the core of existence itself. She translates from the subconscious and delivers using techniques gifted from the rhythms of the greater heartbeat. She is driven toward the connection between humanity and the natural environments in which we interact within an ancient and modern existence.

Finding enjoyment in nature and creation, portrait artist Jenna Billman paints to share the special connection held between humans and nature. Through thoughtful compositions and emotion in her subject matter, Jenna uses space, harmony, and intent to amplify storytelling in her art practice.

Jen Sievers is a prominent contemporary New Zealand artist known for her bold colour, joyful energy and distinctive use of shape. Her work has been featured extensively in leading interiors and lifestyle publications and is held in private collections throughout New Zealand, Australia and internationally. Working across expressive landscapes, abstract paintings and playful 3D floral forms, Jen has built a loyal following for work that radiates joy and feels unmistakably her own. She believes art can transform not only a space, but how we feel within it—bringing colour, personality and everyday joy to the places we inhabit.

Jeremy McCormick is gaining rapid recognition for his vibrant and impactful artwork within New Zealand and around the globe. He is an experienced self-taught artist whose paintings blend hyper-realism and surrealism, often featuring wildlife set against striking landscapes and urban, graffiti-covered streets. Jeremy's works tell cautionary stories about the consequences of humanity's impact on nature, depicting wildlife in constant rebellion and envisioning a future where the natural world reclaims urban environments. His compositions reflect a profound depth of thought and convey a meaningful message about humanity's relationship with existence.

Jesse Woolston (b. 1992, New Zealand) is a multi-disciplinary artist renowned for his ability to merge digital technology with nature-inspired themes to create otherworldly masterpieces. His expertise in computational simulations serves as a foundation for his exploration of the sublime, in monumental digital landscapes. Woolston’s work not only captivates through visual grandeur but also through immersive soundtracks that offer a profound auditory and visual experience. Woolston’s work has garnered international recognition through exhibitions, brand collaborations, and partnerships with prominent institutions. High-profile installations include The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, in collaboration with Pace Gallery during Frieze London (2023); Pace Gallery’s Superblue in Miami; a charity auction event for Re:wild with Leonardo DiCaprio (2023); The Royal Exhibition Building with Steve Reich (2023); Dior for the Men’s Summer 2023 Collection (2023); Science Museum Oklahoma (2022); The Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney (2022); The Museum of Moving Image (2020); The California Academy of Sciences Morrison Planetarium for the Mutek Arts & Music Festival (2018); and a collaboration with the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell’s astrophysics research department (2019), among others.

Jessie Christieson is a self-taught intuitive expressionist artist, channelling vibrant energy and raw emotion through colour, movement, and texture. A deep connection to her faith fuels her creative process, guiding her to express a profound sense of joy, hope, and healing. Jessie’s work bursts with bold colours, intricate textures, and dynamic movement, seeking to reflect not only the complexity and chaos of life, but the joy found in unexpected journeys. Jessie’s work invites deep personal connection and interpretation.

New Zealand contemporary artist Koratoras integrates Abstract Expressionism and Māori themes in painting, sculpture, and printmaking. His art, deeply rooted in whakapapa and personal narrative, explores cultural identity and the universal human experience. Koratoras revitalises traditional Māori forms and ancestral knowledge within a modern context, offering authentic insights into heritage, resilience, and the Māori worldview.

Born in New Zealand, Joanne works from her studio in Christchurch. Her paintings are informed by a variety of subjects, including history, advertising, a concern for the natural environment, and everyday situations. Satire and irony provide the basis for many artworks that delight in taking the mickey out of everything and anything. With an interest in fine detail, her work is defined by the use of bold design and colour, which dances on the canvas and draws the eye around the scene. Joanne has exhibited throughout New Zealand and in New York. She has work in collections in Hong Kong, Singapore, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy (Benetton Collection), the United States, and Australia.

Joe Kemp is a self taught Māori sculptor of over 25 years , he has work in public spaces and private collections here in Aotearoa and abroad . He and his wife Sherie have their own art gallery on the shores of lake Rotoma for public and private viewings.

In his paintings, Jorg reconstructs aspects of natural forms and textures. His intention is to bring the viewer into a world that they are familiar and comfortable with. Jorg would like the viewer to connect subconsciously, to be drawn into discovering the paintings’ aspects, and to be enriched by the formal beauty of the abstract form. Jorg is a full-time artist and has, for over ten years, sold many of his works through selected galleries in New Zealand, and to clients in Australia, Europe, and the USA. He often creates large commissioned paintings for private customers and corporations.

Josh is a self-taught, versatile artist from Whangārei, Northland, whose work blends human expression with cultural narratives. Drawing from his Māori heritage and other indigenous cultures, he explores storytelling using multimedia techniques, creating a visual marriage of black-and-white contrasts and bold colours with oils, acrylics, charcoal, airbrushing, and sculpture. His focus is on merging realism, abstract, and contemporary styles into a unified body of work, driven by a passion for cultural expression. In March 2024, Josh quit his job to pursue his passion as a full-time artist, making Art in the Park 2025 his first large exhibition. Every year Art in the Park sponsors one young artist from The King’s Trust & Art in the Park; Art & Enterprise Programme to exhibit at the show. This year’s awarded artist is Josh - through his captivating portraits in mixed media, a strong artistic voice shone through as a talent that deserved to be championed. Josh is exhibiting a full exhibit of work as part of the main exhibition in the show, as well as contributing one statement piece to the MAS Emerging Artists Gallery.

Award-winning New Zealand artist Juliet Best creates luminous, sculptural landscapes defined by luxurious hand-gilded gold leaf and bold impasto terrain. Each work is richly textured, uniquely catching and reflecting light, enhanced by jewel tones and deep earthy hues that evoke ocean, coastline, and vast skies. Her original paintings glow with an understated radiance, while limited editions offer velvety depth. A recipient of the New Zealand Millennium Landscape Art Award 2024, Juliet has been artist-in-residence for Life Flight Helicopter and Air New Zealand’s Wellington Koru Lounges. Her work is collected worldwide.

Justin Galligan utilises steel rod and wire to create lines in space to sketch in three dimensions. Galligan is inspired by forms with movement, Wabi Sabi and balance without symmetry. His latest Kinetic wind sculptures were inspired by an analogue drawing machine he built in 2021 which produces unique pen patterns which cannot be reproduced.

Karley Feaver transforms her work into evocative sculptures that blur the lines between traditional taxidermy and modern sculpture. Her works are simultaneously poetic and vexing, and explores the profound connection between humans and nature, life and death, past and present. “I’ve fallen in a kind of obsessive, curious love with this art form and this is my attempt to understand animals and our obsessions with nature, beauty and death”. Drawing on a lifelong inspiration from nature, Karley’s surreal creations invite viewers to connect with its intricate beauty and contemplate the power of objects to hold personal meaning.

Kate McLeod is a contemporary abstract painter based in Ōtautahi Christchurch whose work explores movement, transformation and the unseen through richly layered abstraction. Guided by intuition and refined through deliberate process, she uses oil, acrylic, resin, pigment and metal leaf to create immersive paintings where gesture, colour and material carry the energy of their making. Her work has been exhibited widely across Aotearoa and is held in public and private collections internationally. This year marks Kate’s Art in the Park debut, where she presents a new body of work inviting viewers to slow down, look closely and discover new connections.

Kayla Bacon is an emerging artist living in the small beach town of Raglan, New Zealand. Influenced by the light-hearted and funky qualities of 1970s wallpaper design, her work looks towards social change and action by reflecting on the past. Deepening her inquiry into geometric abstraction, her work plays with colour and illusion. Combining digital and analogue practices, she creates 3D wall-hanging paintings that manipulate perception and produce a sense of movement.

Kennan Faber is a multidisciplinary artist specialising in egg tempera painting and mixed media sculpture. Their work is inspired by their university studies in anthropology, leading them to explore themes of human nature and agency. Their current body of work explores the overwhelming fear of extinction and the agency we have in the end of the world.