“I have dabbled in a variety of art, some time ago even pottery was part of my life and some pieces made it to Wanaka from Leysin in Switzerland… but my passion for painting rekindled when settling in New Zealand towards the end of the last century. For a while, the study of NZ native plants, a newly discovered passion, took precedence over art. Also, my body was still in alpine climbing mode and time for painting was not so much available just yet.

During the Millennium year, we relocated from Aoraki Mt Cook village to Wanaka to start our adventure biz. ArtyIris has come fully out of the closet during Covid 2020 when more paintings were created than ever before.

Greeting cards from some of my paintings got printed. A year later, three of the original paintings are sold and therefore, the remaining cards have become ‘limited edition’.

My creations are mostly watercolour paintings though occasionally I venture into mixed media, having dabbled in oil and acrylics. The subjects of my paintings, drawings and sketches range from botanical native or not so native plants through to landscapes and abstract, the rare structural and a few bird paintings.
I have always wanted to create ‘Affordable Art’ and sometimes I enjoy creating the frames for the paintings too. Second hand frames are fun to find and I love using them as well, motto reuse/recycle.

In particular, I love the pleinair painting excursions around beautiful Wanaka and further afield and this media of watercolour suits me perfectly for such excursions.

The 2020 covid year provided the exact chemical mixture needed to catapult me into my new career as artist and I’m loving it.”