audrey holmes, artist
I grew up in Hawke’s Bay, which is a sunny province located in the North Island of New Zealand. Given that I was positioned at the tail-end of a large family, I learned to be silent and just watch the world’s dynamics from a young age. No one tends to notice a quiet child curled up with a book! After completing secondary school, I ventured to Christchurch to study psychology and old/middle English literature at Canterbury University. I completed a master’s degree in psychology, then moved to the West Coast of the South Island to an old stone cottage at the foot of the mountains. Hours spent roaming the rainforest and old regenerating mining tailings with Sasha, my red kelpie, resulted in a compulsion to draw and paint, which culminated in an exhibition at Greymouth’s Left Bank Art Gallery. I then moved further south to the small township of Ross, and found more inspiration in winter walks on wild wind-swept beaches and collecting strange twists of driftwood. While in Ross, I completed a diploma of art and creativity (hons).
In 2006, my career led me to Wellington, which provided a marked contrast to the isolated natural environment of the West Coast. Fortunately, the walkways through the bush in the Wellington hills offered a respite from the hum of city life, and some of the huge old trees in the Bolton St Memorial Park became good friends. The need to get my fingers in the earth and grow roots motivated the hunt for a piece of land in 2009, which led to a well-hidden lifestyle block with stands of huge old native trees in the Rangitikei/Manawatu hill country. I built a treehouse studio suspended in a stand of towering redwoods where there is inspiration at the windowsills. When not painting or drawing and dreaming in the trees, I can be found working in my ever-expanding garden, out with the horses, or waging war with escaping poultry.
vision and inspiration
As a child I preferred to live in my imagination and spent most of my time deep in books, both the classics and modern material. When I moved to the West Coast, I lived in a strange little cottage built of stone that was surrounded by regenerating native bush and overshadowed by the misty and mysterious Paparoa ranges. I found my imagination was in sync with my surroundings for the first time. This unleashed a flood of work that drew on the feeling of being among the trees; when you see something out of the corner of your eye and turn, but it is just a tree stump...
Myriad artists and creators have provided me with untold inspiration, including the metal point and chalk drawings of the old masters, the etchings of Piranesi, the illustrations of Arthur Rackham and Harry Clark, the jewel-bright tones and symbolism of the Pre-Raphaelites, the stunning lines and contrasts of Aubrey Beardsley, the darkness of Odilon Redon, the softness of Georgette O’Keeffe, and the stark beauty of Ansell Adams.
Horses comprise a major theme throughout my work. I am not focused so much on what horses look like, but rather what they are. They are power, beauty, and majesty. They are teachers and healers. Their movement and the way they interact with the world, both natural and artificial, is incredible. They speak to us on so many levels and can deeply touch our psyche. Following the threads of the horse through story and myth leads one in so many interesting directions and to so many connections. Often it leads back to the Goddess, which feeds into my quest to find the Goddess in her many different forms by delving deeply into mythology and old stories.
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