Korimako News April 2024

Hi everybody,

The first thing that took my online eye this morning was the post from The Drawing Room in Christchurch offering limited supplies of tartan paint 😄. Yes, it’s April already.

Autumn is in full swing at the lake. The frosts have seen to my dahlias and the rest of the garden is slowly putting itself to sleep for the winter. The studio is busy with lots of travellers and Te Araroa walkers who are having a day or two off, and I’m busy with the final preparations for my bird workshop in Wellington for Watercolour New Zealand, which I think is now fully booked – really looking forward to teaching one of my favourite subjects and hopefully have some spare time to catch up with our Wellington friends.

Robbie made the comment recently how much time I put preparing for a workshop – and he’s right! Though I have my basic format in place I’m constantly refining what/how I teach, in response to feedback from each workshop. I try to keep things simple and on track, but there are always extra questions which lead us down tantalising side paths. Why do I put so much time and effort into teaching?

This week I received an email from someone who attended a workshop with me a few years ago and I thought you might interested in her story…

“Several years ago I was sitting in Auckland airport with all planes being grounded waiting for a flight to Nelson to go fishing for a few days and thinking about my Air NZ days; how during these weather disrupted times I would be up in the crew room, wheels up, enjoying a cup of fruit tea, doing some cross stitch and chewing the fat with other hostie mates. Anyway I am sitting next to a lovely woman, a wee bit older than I and we start chatting, she’s also missed her flight to Nelson, so I say let’s go to the counter and be proactive and see if we can get an earlier flight than the one they rescheduled us onto? There was one flight going earlier and so we raced up to the counter and sure enough with a bit of begging we got onto it however our bags couldn’t be on the same one, we could collect them later on the next day. No problem said my new found friend, I am overnighting in Nelson tonight, I live in St Arnaud I’ll pick them up tomorrow and can you come and collect them from my home tomorrow afternoon?Luckily for me I had kept my bag de toilette in my cabin bag and a change of ‘smalls’ (old habits die hard) so all would be well.

Little did I know my life was to change forever having met this lovely woman, as I sat next to her on the flight to Nelson. She pervaded a sense of calm, peace and tranquility like the sound of the waves lapping at the shore and later on I was to learn Jan too had a brush with cancer.
So we get our cup of awful inflight tea and start chatting; her name is Jan Thomson and she’s an artist.
Anyway she asks me if I paint and I say no, I was told at school I would never amount to anything in the art world and so I never pursued . Jan says I’ll let you into a secret, anyone can paint and I have a beginner’s workshop in a month, would I like to attend? I politely declined but said, when I move South permanently I would love to attend one then. I was still having doubts about my ability and imagined she was just being encouraging and polite to this old trout. But she did have those bright sparkly blue eyes and an impish grin whilst she was saying it so there had to be a possibility she was correct. The next day we picked up my suitcase at her home in St Arnaud and I asked if we could look through her beautiful studio. You walk into the studio and all you feel is calm and at peace and then you start to look at the works on the wall. Jan paints in many media but her water colours to me are incredible; they draw you in, you consider what you are viewing and your brain fills in the rest. At that very moment I was hooked, I knew I would be back in about a year and I told her so then and there.

Duly I moved to Murchison, some months later, the weekend arrived when I would be going to my beginner’s water colour class . With much trepidation on my part and five other artists we all found a place at a group table in the middle of Jan’s studio. We did introductions said what we wanted to paint, landscapes for one, flora and fauna for another then the whole class erupted with laughter in a kind way when I said I wanted to paint trout and trout flies. OK said Jan but on this weekend we are all going to paint a landscape.I had photographed the Buller as it leaves the lake looking down the lake to the mountains. I had hoped to capture a trout rising but it wasn’t to be on this occasion. As the weekend progressed so did our practice and learning – we completed our landscape and when Jan told me it was great I cried. It was as if forty years of that art teacher telling me I would never amount to anything had been undone. I was by far the beginner on this workshop weekend but Jan tells me at our one on one lessons my work is coming along in leaps and bounds.  No pun intended but just like a trout, leaps and bounds.

So to finish this story, it’s about three years now since I started to paint and I love it when I have the time to indulge myself. I came to the realisation that it is a very healing time to indulge in painting – you get lost in time and suddenly it’s hours later, the dinner is not on and it’s getting dim so time to put the brushes away. Works at this stage are still being given away but I do have two commissions awaiting me for when I feel I am ready to complete them.”

Thanks, Sherrie. I feel very humbled by your comments and the way that painting has changed your life. This is what keeps me sharing my painting journey with others 🙂

Enjoy autumn, Jan 🙂