Art & Design

When I was growing up in Waihi I wasn't exposed to any artistic influences but I had a strong desire to build things and draw pictures. I would have been lucky to find a pen in our house and even luckier to have any paper to draw on but at school I was encouraged to draw and paint from my art teachers, so I did and I enjoyed it. My grades were good so when I passed my university exams with an A bursary I thought about going to Art School.

When I got to the Elam School of Fine Arts I found that for the first time I could concentrate on being artistic, think about the world of design and photography, art history, and I was being motivated and inspired by all of the talented people that were there. Some of the tutors were great like Don Binney, Phil Dadson, Greer Twis, Robert Ellis, Dick Frizzell to name a few (Some were not so great too). I met some incredibly gifted people there and formed life-long friendships with them.

I didn't have a clue what I was going to be when I came out of Art School but I had a strong connection with photography and design, with computers starting to develop I chose design. Once I did that I had many years of learning ahead, trying to get that instinct that good designers have. How do you get that? Only by doing it over and over, looking at what works and what doesn't, living and breathing it for a while, then it all starts to come naturally, thank goodness because design is 'problem solving' and it can be very difficult to do.