Sue Butler
Sue Butler is the current president of Waitakere Arts and have organized the Waitakere Arts Awards Exhibition and Expo and many of our other exhibitions, with the help of a team of volunteers.
Sue is an Artist who works in a variety of mediums such as wood, glass, fabrics and wire. A specialist in upcycling and re-imagining your treasure! She is well known for creating three-dimensional works, often including lighting. Sue has a diploma in interior design, and she can be contacted through Waitakere Arts.
Eleanor Le Roux
Eleanor Le Roux is a West Auckland artist/graphic designer. She focuses mainly on painting horses with acrylic paints.
She is currently exhibiting in our Waitakere Arts Awards Exhibition and Expo, in shed 2 on Corban Art Estate!!
Robin Scott
Robin Scott loves to incorporate New Zealand's nature into her works.
Brenda Liddiard
Brenda started painting in 2003, beginning with watercolours, before moving into abstract expressionism in acrylics, and more recently focusing on land and seascapes, and portraits in oils and mixed media.
She has trained with a number of excellent tutors, including Jane Zusters, Allie Eagle, James Lawrence, Alvin Xiong and Philippa Blair, and has exhibited at The Wallace Gallery (Morrinsville), Artspost (Hamilton), Depot Artspace Devonport, Northart (Northcote), Village Arts (Kohukohu), No. 1 Parnell (Rawene), artHAUS (Orakei), Mairangi Bay Arts Centre, and Papakura Art Gallery. One of her paintings recently won 2nd prize at the Waitakere Arts Awards.
In 2016 Brenda (and 4 other artists) founded the charitable group, Art for Change, which has organised fundraising exhibitions and events around social change issues over the last 5 years.
Website: www.brendaliddiard.co.nz
Ioana Schwalger
Ioana Schwalger is a Pasifika artist and photographer based in Henderson, Auckland.
Ioana's influences and inspiration are often attributed to her Christian faith and Samoan heritage.
Her passion for portraiture through the media of paint and photography, helps bring to life both the strength and the beauty of the portrait.
Ioana is also a winner in this year's Waitakere Arts Awards Exhibition, in the photography section, with her image titled "Mark" - the first picture below.
Anastasia Katalkina
Hello, my name is Anastasia Katalkina, and I’m an artist. I have enjoyed painting since my childhood. I love expressing my emotions using paint and brushes. I think it is a universal language that allows you to speak with not words but feelings.
I learned to work in a variety of techniques and with various materials: clay modeling, tapestry weaving, working with sepia and pastel, linocut, cold and hot bows, as well as collage and illustration. All these skills helped me to build a solid foundation for my future profession.
When it comes to finding inspiration, when people ask me what inspires me, I can’t immediately give an exact and clear answer. After all, the world around us is so beautiful, unique, unrepeatable. Sometimes it can be nature itself, or moments of life, sometimes photos of nice collections of pictures on Pinterest.
It happened so that I ended up in a beautiful country – New Zealand, where everything is unknown and unusual. I find nature here beautiful and charming. It challenges me with an interesting task: conveying my view, emotions, and thoughts, using familiar methods – brushes and paints.
View more of my work here: https://www.etsy.com/nz/shop/AnaArtKatalkina
Susan Brogan
For the last thirty plus years Susan has been doing all things glass. She enjoys doing a diverse range of glass-art …. from lead-light panels to fused glass. She restores lead-lights from old China cabinets, make fused glass art for gallery sale, lead-lights for new and restoration projects. Each and every project is different and very rewarding.
She is also the winner of the Corban Estate Art Award in this years' Waitakere Arts Awards Exhibition, for her piece “Through the Looking Glass II”.
Karen Kennedy
Another of our very talented featured artists who's work you'll be able to view and buy at our Members Exhibition, is Karen Kennedy. She has been potting for 35 years and have won over 30 awards for her ceramic sculptures. Most of her work is mid fired, white earthenware clay with high fire stains and a clear glaze.
Sheree Foster
Sheree is no stranger to being a featured artist here at Waitakere Arts, and since October and following a hugely successful first exhibition she has been focusing on the new year with several plans for her next solo exhibition in early June.
She has put several new pieces in different exhibitions and Art festivals. She is enjoying a bit of a Copper focus at the moment, whilst still incorporating this with Nature and using her recycled finds and treasures.
A few surprises she's hoping for:
She was fortunate to be Awarded the Premium 3D Award in the recent 9th Hibiscus and Bays Art Awards and the Artist Reveal Award 3D at Mairangi Bay Arts Centre. She will be having some of her work in the Estuary Arts exhibition in February next year... plus of course she is looking forward to the Members Awards with Waitakere Arts coming up.
Diane Dickinson
Diane Dickinson is an artist based in Swanson who uses acrylic paint to create her art. Calling on the sights, sounds and experiences in her life she is inspired by a wide range of subjects and styles. If something captivates her imagination, she wants to paint it!
With a lifetime experience in painting, Diane has recently turned her hand to acrylic pouring techniques, enjoying the challenge of the many techniques and unpredictable outcomes. She describes the desire to create as a constant in her life and an important part of her well-being. She aspires to create art that brings joy to others and which sometimes stimulates their imagination.
Sherrill Bentley
My grandmother taught me harakeke weaving at a young age.
This taught me the joy of making things with my hands and ignited my love of creativity. I started painting while living in Los Angeles USA when I became friends with a local artist. She taught me the fundamentals of painting and it quickly became a passion. I have painted ever since and it is a focal point in my life.
These days I work from a studio in my home in Onehunga, Auckland.
I love designing artworks and seeing them come to life on the canvas. Vibrant colours inspire me as well as decorative patterns and native birds. My art is shown in group exhibitions around the country and in recent years I have been painting outdoor murals around Auckland.
Victoria Moore
Being a self-taught artist, I enjoy working with different mediums and exploring possibilities of all types of art. I’m inspired by nature and the feminine and I frequently combine the two. I work mostly in watercolour in the winter & oils in the summer, in between it could be paper or a craft idea. I like to use my colours in a bold way and standing before a blank canvas waiting for that connection is a dynamic process for me. Art, music & the written word go hand in hand when relaying a story, and a story can be represented by each layer of paint, each word, tree, and bird. I don’t plan the palette too much rather; I want it to reveal itself.
I couldn’t imagine not painting it’s my real voice. When a piece is finished, I can see exactly how I’m thinking & feeling.
Karen Wilde
Karen Wilde is a qualified sculptor, specialising in contemporary ceramics. Her artwork often features themes exploring te taiao (nature) and observing both landscapes and the macro world. Wilde built her own raku kiln from a recycled honey drum in 2021 to develop mediums and objects through continuous play. Her interest in organic chemistry in art and material sustainability produces unique and unpredictable surface results within her artwork. She also experiments with primitive pit firings, using recycled materials and garden waste to design organic glazes.
Her current works include a series of spherical vessels with minimal openings. Simple in form yet often housing complex, textured configurations, they push the boundaries of glaze alchemy to create contemporary art objects with conceptual tensions. Founded on ecological studies of Aotearoa coastlines, flora and fauna. Other artworks in the making oscillate between abstract forms and figurative pieces, some with intricate wire weaving.
Karen Wilde is new to exhibiting her artwork but has already established herself as an emerging artist to watch. She received both The Ceramics Merit Award at The Trusts 35th Arts Exhibition and was selected as a Finalist at the Emerging Artist Awards, The Upstairs Gallery in 2022.
Val Enger
Val Enger paints in acrylics, pastels, and watercolour. Val has been interested in Art since her college years.. She started painting full time 10 years ago and finished three years at Brown School of Arts..
"Organic forms and shapes appear everywhere we look and invoice a reaction that connects me to nature.
Lately I have been moving into Abstract paintings which are still inspired by the Land around me. I am searching for a visual 'truth' that finds its place between the observed and the deeply personal and transitory nature of the experience. Painting is a process of application coupled with a reductive approach that through editing, shifts the work into an autonomous space of individual expression."
