The long tradition of Academy solos continues with Solo29... 

The exhibition was opened by Academy Councillor Alfred Memelink with all the artists in attendance. This was a striking exhibition that featured good sales for all the participating artists and a lively opening.

Jane Brimblecombe

Jane works from her Shelly Bay studio creating mosaic works using mainly mirror glass, "I like to make pieces that shimmer and maximise the play of light. I aim to make the viewer feel uplifted and part of the piece when they look into it". Her main influences are the sea and music.

Jane's work can be found in New York, Canada, Australia, London, Europe and can be seen on the landings of the Museum Hotel in Wellington. She has undertaken many commissioned pieces for commercial and private buyers.

Beryl Buchanan

Beryl began making pots in 1973, quickly finding great enjoyment in working with clay. A move to Wellington in 1975 saw potting become her career. She found that teaching at community night schools ensured she quickly developed her own technical skills in form, glazing and firing.

"Today I work exclusively in Australian porcelain and enjoy the challenge that working with this fine medium presents. I love to create works with a purpose and work principally in Chinese celadon, copper reds and have recently introduced metallic lustres."

James Harcourt

James lives in Wellington and has a studio at Shelly Bay - sharing a building with ten other artists. He says this support creates a dynamic environment. James is an Academy Councillor and managed the 'Art to Go' exhibition over the summer.

"My work for Solo29 is abstract painting encompassing a series of lintels and multimedia expression"

Anna Marie Kingsley

Anna-Marie is a self taught artist who has been painting professionally since 2006.  She features in Denis Robinson's book New Zealands Favourite Artists vol 2. In 2009 she came second in the Peters Doig Award and first in the Wai and the Macalister Awards. Living on 60 acres in the Wairarapa she says when she's not vacuuming play dough out of the carpet - she's planting native trees.

Almost exclusively painting taps, Anna-Marie's artwork "explores the anthropomorphic personification of a utilitarian household object through the extensive energy transfer from human hands." In the Tapestry series to be shown in Solo29 she's brought a new dimension to her taps "now reclining elegantly on luxurious fabric" she says.

Bruce Luxford

Bruce is a winner of the Academy's Gordon Harris Award. He has retired from a career in graphic design to become a full time painter with a studio in Seatoun, Wellington.

He describes his work as oil painting with fairly wide ranging visual content but with some common themes. "The exploitation of natural resources and the spread of material affluence from urban to rural and coastal areas and the environmental impact this is having on the landscape is one such theme. As this direction evolves, the landscape and imposing man made structures become metaphorical in the deliberation of the time cycles for nature as a whole and mankind as a resident species."

Lindsay Mitchell

Her painting career began after the birth of her first child in 1994. "Having left full-time work, more time and creativite energhy was available, as well as a newborn to inspire me. I taught myself how to use oils and had my first portraits accepted for exhibition in 1995. Most of my work comes from commissions, particularly to paint children and animals, mostly in oil but increasingly in pastel."

Solo29 is Lindsay's third solo. "Most of the work I'll be exhibiting continues my interest in Maori subjects captured initially on camera early last century. Hopefully my re-creation of them as colourful oils gives the subjects longevity and keeps alive a sense of New Zealand's past".

Kay McCormick

Kay was born in Dunedin and says she drew before she could write. "I drew faces in particular and my caricatures of teachers got me into trouble on more than one occasion. My main career has been in nursing which took me all over the world, returning by sea to Wellington three years ago.

My journey home was enlivened by my being commissioned to draw a portrait of the Captain, who in turn asked me to draw passengers and staff for the ship's charity auction, including Holywood legend Patricia Neal.

In 1980 I had a serious head and neck injury which left me with a permanent headache and unable to tolerate the smells of oil painting, I switched to watercolour pencils and latterly watercolour paint. I am sure the time away from New Zealand allows me to see it afresh and I'm finding watercoloiur the ideal medium."

Jane Sinclair

Jane has established herself as a highly successful landscape painter basedin the Wairarapa. She believes her paintings reflect the open nature of the landscape and the play of light and shadow on local landforms. Alongside painting she has become well known as an art tutor, teaching workshops in acrylics and watercolours. This will be Jane's third Solo exhibition at the Academy, where she has been exhibiting since 1991.

"My paintings for Solo29 will be predominantly of the Wairarapa, a place I adore."

Vinny Thompson

Vinny lives in the Wellington region and says; "Wellington and the Kapiti Coast continue to provide inspiration for my work, with landmark buildings and birdlife in abundance. I use clay and glaze as a medium to study the environment I grew up in, and I like to make surfaces I can draw and paint on, so I tend to work with slabs of clay and make them into bowls, platters and tiles. It's not domestic ware but art to hang on the wall or sit on the table. I carve the surface of each piece, usually with a picture of an old villa or a native bird, and the clay is glazed in bright colours. I use earthenware or stoneware clays to sculpt tuatara which have become a favourite subject of mine."

Christie Wright

Christie Wright is a Wellingtonian, her media is usually acrylic on canvas. "Painting for me is not so much about conveying any particular message, it's about the act of creation and the joy and fascination a person can find in something beautiful.

"I have always appreciated art in which I felt I could see both the artist's and the sunject's personality. Artists have the unique ability to offer us glimpses of a world that is alltheir own - twisted and coloured by the lens of their minds eye. In my work I'm aiming for fun, for imagination, for colour. I like to take something real -  something that already has a character of its own - and build from there.

So one needn't agonise over meaning or searching for symbolism, just let your imagination wander and enjoy seeing the world through different eyes."