Naomi Azoulay - Contemporary Collage Artist

Artist Michael McHugh is New Zealand born and resides in Sydney Australia. For more than three decades, he has been exploring the vast potential of colour, composition and abstract form with an inquisitive emphasis on the natural world. 

McHugh believes constant drawing and collaging to be fundamental to his painting process. This foundation enables him to fully explore composition and vigorously push boundaries with colour, pattern and technique.

I had a lovely chat with Michael. We talk about his career in advertising and media and how he juggles life as Editor in Chief of the Mindfood magazine which he and his wife founded in 2008 with his art practice and how working in publishing influences his art practice and the way he works. We discuss his initial lack of confidence in his own art and how the passing of his beloved mother became a catalyst for developing his art practice further. He shares the story of his first opportunity to show his work and how to his surprise the show sold out within 20 minutes. This marked the beginning of his very successful career as an artist.

We hear all about his painting and drawing process and he shares some of the tools, tricks and techniques he likes to use. Michael talks about his current solo show entitled CHROMA at Martin Browne Contemporary in Sydney, which is on now and runs until the end of March 2024. 

Ngā mihi, thanks for listening!

Listen to this episode and see the artist's work on our blog https://www.creativematters.co.nz/blog

You can follow us for updates on https://www.instagram.com/creativematterspodcast/


Please rate and review our show to help others find us https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/creative-matters/id1561034043

Faleata Ualesi is an emerging contemporary Samoan Artist living in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. His current work is built around motifs shown through grids and pacific patterns.

I loved meeting Faleata and welcoming him to my studio (and black taro patch) at Muriwai Beach. In this episode we talk about Faleata's teaching career, how he manages his art practice around his job, and how he feels having a full time job in a way takes away the pressure to sell his artwork, allowing him to focus on experimenting and exploring and trying new techniques and media. 

Faleata is a proud South Aucklander raised in Ōtara. He has participated in the South Versed annual group shows for the last 2 years and will again in 2024. Faleata talks passionately about his work inspired by siapo, tapa cloth and Samoan tattoo and how he is currently experimenting with "breaking free out of the box" using more open curved lines, texture, colour and pattern. We discuss his use of acrylic pens, his commission work, his drawings and paintings, his light boxes and the beautiful installation tribute to his parents in the Auckland CBD. 

Ngā mihi, thanks for listening!

Listen to this episode and see the artist's work on our blog https://www.creativematters.co.nz/blog

You can follow us for updates on https://www.instagram.com/creativematterspodcast/


Please rate and review our show to help others find us https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/creative-matters/id1561034043

Tony Ogle is known as one of New Zealand’s leading screen printers. He currently lives in Tairāwhiti, Gisborne. 

Next month in March Tony celebrates a prolific art career of more than 30 years with a retrospective solo exhibition at Parnell Gallery in Tamaki Makaurau Auckland, showing more than 60 of his original paintings that have rarely been seen in their original state.

Tony digs deep into his fascinating life story and art practice. He talks about how his grandmother inspired him as a youngster and the long summer days he spent exploring the NZ coastline and the Hauraki Gulf in Auckland with his family, sparking his curiosity and imagination and consequently influencing his art practice.

We discuss how he got into screen printing, what he loves about this form of printmaking, his screen printing process and how it has allowed him to work full time as an artist for so long and make such a name for himself. 

Tony also tells a few awesome stories about the old villa he used to flat in on Takapuna Beach that later became the Lakehouse Arts Centre and his involvement in creating the Lakehouse Trust to retain the house for the future.

Ngā mihi, thanks for listening!

Listen to this episode and see the artist's work on our blog https://www.creativematters.co.nz/blog

You can follow us for updates on https://www.instagram.com/creativematterspodcast/


Please rate and review our show to help others find us https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/creative-matters/id1561034043

Tawhai Rickard is a contemporary New Zealand Maori artist born in Gisborne, Tūranganui-a-Kiwa, of Ngati Porou decent.

He is influenced by the epic history of his country Aotearoa, New Zealand and its historical interrelationship between Māori and Pakeha to the present day.  His work reflects the social, historical and cultural landscapes of Aotearoa - Korerō, commentary, history and stories about our journey as New Zealand. 

In this episode Tawhai talks about his journey from growing up in Tairāwhiti, Gisborne, rarely seeing artwork representing his Maori culture, to becoming an artist himself. He reflects back on his first experiences drawing and how some of those ideas have been carried through to his art practice today and how he creates work to honour his Maori culture, to lift it up and to make as much noise visually as he can. Encouraging people to stop and take notice. 

We discuss his interest in pop art, music, TV and movies, British and NZ pop culture, figurative paintings from his ancestorial wharenui or house and our bicultural foundations and how these things create fuel for his art practice.

Ngā mihi, thanks for listening!

Listen to this episode and see the artist's work on our blog https://www.creativematters.co.nz/blog

You can follow us for updates on https://www.instagram.com/creativematterspodcast/


Please rate and review our show to help others find us https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/creative-matters/id1561034043

Esther is a photographic artist living in Greytown in the Wairarapa. She has had a long successful photographic career firstly in wedding photography then in project and portrait photography. Her personal fine art photographic practice has become her main focus since 2020.

At her core Esther loves to illuminate others and give them their opportunity to shine.

She is passionate about giving people a voice and is interested in the emotion and story behind a work. It's important to her to balance this with her desire to create, experiment and explore, and to be curious - in a less conventional way. 

Esther and I talk about how and why she loves to work with people, her wedding photography days and how this career shaped her skills, techniques and influenced her future photographic practice. She shares her experimental creative process and some of the tricks, techniques and tools she uses for achieving such unique photographs. We explore some of her other collections and the meaning behind the work she does.

Ngā mihi, thanks for listening!

Listen to this episode and see the artist's work on our blog https://www.creativematters.co.nz/blog

You can follow us for updates on https://www.instagram.com/creativematterspodcast/


Please rate and review our show to help others find us https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/creative-matters/id1561034043

Naomi Azoulay is a middle-eastern-born, Auckland-based award-winning portrait and mixed media collage artist. 

Naomi creates captivating, bold, intimate and vibrant mixed media collages and oil paintings. She aims to tackle social justice issues, decolonise the art space and expand the definition of beauty. She is passionate about exploring the female gaze and probing traditional gender roles. With over three decades of experience in education, Naomi has also earned a reputation as an innovative and dynamic art educator.

Naomi talks about her childhood in Israel, why she came to emigrate to Aotearoa 22 years ago and how the Israel-Hamas War of today has affected her. We chat about how she discovered the art of collage, when she came to have the confidence to call herself as an artist and why she thinks collage is such a great medium. 

We dive deep into some of her collages and paintings and why she likes to portray women in all of her work, how she manages and promotes the 2 sides to her art practice and the amazing work she does in community art education. And she has some great perspectives on being creative, learning new art skills, buying local, the merits and magic of intuitive collage, supporting her community and applying for funding - to name a few!

https://www.instagram.com/naomi_azoulay_collage/
https://www.instagram.com/naomi_azoulay_art/

Ngā mihi, thanks for listening!

Listen to this episode and see the artist's work on our blog https://www.creativematters.co.nz/blog

You can follow us for updates on https://www.instagram.com/creativematterspodcast/


Please rate and review our show to help others find us https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/creative-matters/id1561034043

Oliver Cain is an English born artist who emigrated to Aotearoa New Zealand in 2013. His work covers a wide range of topics and materials and takes many forms from ceramics to sculpture to installation and painting. His artworks push the boundaries between conceptualism and post-pop art. 

As a proud member of the queer community, Oliver uses his work to examine, question and criticise the relationships between gender, (homo) sexuality, and society's misconceptions about these themes. His work initiates a conversation between avant-garde artistic production and human perceptions about queer sexuality. 

Ollie and I have such an inspiring, honest chat in this episode. He reflects on how he dealt with being gay growing up in the UK, how he navigated through this time and how the decision in his second year at Unitec to express his queer identity through his art gave his work 'wings' and 'heart'. He's passionate about creating work that engages and questions people, making people stop, engage, react and think.

We talk in depth about a number of his provocative and possibly confronting works, his fascinating project where he placed a banana in urinals at international galleries and how he has used toilets and other everyday objects as vessels for communicating ideas and telling stories. He comments on the challenges of being an artist in New Zealand and why he has decided to move back to Europe.

This episode is like no other and a fascinating insight into conceptual art and the life and work of Oliver Cain.  https://www.instagram.com/olivercainartist

Ngā mihi, thanks for listening!

Listen to this episode and see the artist's work on our blog https://www.creativematters.co.nz/blog

You can follow us for updates on https://www.instagram.com/creativematterspodcast/


Please rate and review our show to help others find us https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/creative-matters/id1561034043

Joshua Davison is a contemporary artist from Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, with a diverse body of work in both realism portraiture and sculptural painting.

Josh is a self taught artist who has developed personal techniques which he uses throughout his impasto and sculptural paintings such as a methodical palette knife technique, layering MDF like a topographical map, making moulds and piping modelling paste.

Joshua talks about how he strives for originality and how experimenting with different media and techniques, stretching his own canvases, making his own frames and making the tools he uses contributes to finding his own unique style. We have a very candid conversation about dropping out of Elam Art School after one year and how he still went on to become a full time successful artist. We talk about pricing and the big prices his work is commanding and his so called 'failure' at his first Art in the Park event and what he learnt from that. He shares parts of his unique painting process and his connection to realism, surrealism and portraiture as well as nature. 

Josh has some great tips and perspectives as a young emerging artist. I'm sure you'll find his story very inspiring.  https://www.instagram.com/j.davison

Ngā mihi, thanks for listening!

Listen to this episode and see the artist's work on our blog https://www.creativematters.co.nz/blog

You can follow us for updates on https://www.instagram.com/creativematterspodcast/


Please rate and review our show to help others find us https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/creative-matters/id1561034043

Tanja McMillan, a.k.a Misery, is an Australian born painter, sculptor, photographer and mural artist living in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Her creative reach is extensive, ranging from highly crafted fine art paintings and wall art to animation and fashion.

Tanja’s work, under the name Misery, graces streets and galleries in Aotearoa NZ and around the world. She has exhibited in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Melbourne, Taiwan, Berlin, Los Angeles, California, New York, Hawai'i and Paris and has collaborated with New Zealand and international designers and brands such as Blunt, Casio Baby-G, Telecom, Serato and Anna Sui of New York.

In this episode we hear about how Tanja entered the graffiti world as a teenager, how she connected with her grafitti crew TMD and how her artist name Misery came about. Tanja talks about her collaborations with brands and gives some great advice on how to get yourself out there, share ideas and show the world what you do. 

Tanja dives deep into Miseryland. She shares how the characters and worlds she creates develop and what (or who) they represent and why she often personifies plants and objects in her work. She tells a wonderful story about the making of and responses to her 2 bronze sculptures in Karangahape Road. We chat about how deadlines work for her, a week in the life of Misery and how she juggles motherhood and her creative brain.  https://www.instagram.com/miseryland/

Ngā mihi, thanks for listening!

Listen to this episode and see the artist's work on our blog https://www.creativematters.co.nz/blog

You can follow us for updates on https://www.instagram.com/creativematterspodcast/


Please rate and review our show to help others find us https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/creative-matters/id1561034043

Sierra Roberts is an artist from Wānaka, in the South Island of New Zealand. She creates bold, statement portraits exploring perceptions of beauty and the female experience. 

Her travels through Australia, Asia, South, Central and Northern America have strongly influenced her art, inspiring her to share and celebrate the beauty she has experienced, challenging her work beyond traditional portraiture.

We talk about Sierra's experience studying fine arts in Utah and at Whitecliffe in Auckland, how she eventually decided to leave before completing her full degree and why she didn't pick up a paintbrush for the next 4 years. We discuss a pivotal moment in Mexico that triggered her creativity and passion for art, how she found her artistic groove again in 2018 and how she went on to become a full time painter in 2019. Sierra shares her approach to marketing and social media and how 75% of her 2023 sales were through Instagram.

She shares the ideas behind her Frida, Taonga and Coming Home collections, why some of her portraits have their mouths cut off or are painted from the back without seeing the face, how many of her paintings are based around herself in some way and the ways she expresses a sense of belonging and place through her paintings.
https://www.creativematters.co.nz/post/creative-matters-with-sierra-roberts

Ngā mihi, thanks for listening!

Listen to this episode and see the artist's work on our blog https://www.creativematters.co.nz/blog

You can follow us for updates on https://www.instagram.com/creativematterspodcast/


Please rate and review our show to help others find us https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/creative-matters/id1561034043