Ironing board? Janet sparked many people’s curiosity while in the Eastern Bay, with her trusty ironing board and plastic lunch box.
ARMED with an ironing board acquired from the Salvation Army shop, her plastic lunch box which would serve as a palette and her stretched canvases, en plein air artist Janet de Wagt recently accepted the inaugural Art and Acre artist in residence in Whakatane.
Now based in Dunedin, de Wagt has spent her artistic career as a working artist combining living and travelling in different parts of the world. Since the mid 1990s her focus has been on landscapes, primarily due to the dominance and overpowering nature of the land – especially in New Zealand.
Changing light and the changing form of the landscape have almost removed people entirely from this part of her genre. She jumped at the chance to come to Whakatane, earlier this year, and spend a brief time working in the Opotiki, Ohope, Whakatane, Thornton and Lake Rotoma areas.
“Back in 1998 I was selected as the William Hodges Fellow, and spent my time responding to the Southland landscape. While there, Wayne [Marriott, from Art & Acre] and I even made a crazy television programme – when he got back from London – it was a mixture of jet-lag, paint, Charlie Chaplin and sleet and rain as we stood on Bluff Hill with our teeth chattering – we only had one chance to film, with no retakes,” Janet says.
Since then Janet has become a familiar figure as artist in residence in a number of Otago and Southland rest homes and schools, and most notably as the vision behind the McAndrew Bay School Art Auction, which has raised many thousands of dollars for the school since the 1990s and still occurs annually.
Many Eastern Bay people were surprised to come across Janet and her ironing board at The Heads, and at Ohope, where she freely engaged with them.
“People love it when they can come up to you and ask, what’s with the ironing board? Great talking point, and then they are hooked as they watch the landscape emerge on the canvas.
“There is a wonderful sensuality with the landscape in the Bay of Plenty – juxtaposition between the rough and ready crags and the smooth and sensual rolling plain of Moutohora. Nature has challenged many parts of the coastline, and none more so when you can look at Moutohora and see the way nature has sliced part of the coast away exposing a raw wound.”
Janet completed a number of canvases during her time as artist in residence, and these are now on show at Whakatane art gallery and framing business, Art and Acre, in Appenzell Drive, from Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm.She is looking forward to returning to the area early in 2017.
Janet de Wagt’s painting of the Whakatane Harbour. Photos supplied