Wendy Leach: Multi-disciplinary artist
Wendy Leach is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Mangawhai Heads, Northland NZ.
In this chat we unpack her long successful artistic career, from making domestic inspired still life works as a young mother to painting European and New Zealand landscapes, painting abstracts, working with oil pastels and gouache, exploring photography and working with light.
Wendy talks about her time studying at Elam School of Fine Art at age 18 and why she chose to return to study years later, this time at Whitecliffe College in Auckland, to complete her MFA. We explore the work created in her 2 year MFA course, her Surrogate Self Portrait series and her Light Painting series, and what she gained from this and learnt about herself as an artist and as a person.
We discuss the experiences and environments in her life that have influenced her work including a funded trip by a collector to make work and exhibit in Jordan, living in Belgium for 5 years, travelling extensively throughout Europe and the Mangawhai coastline.
Wendy talks about why she is no longer interested in being represented by a gallery, her connections with the community Mangawhai Artists' gallery, how she sells her work, her attitude to moments of creative block, what she looks for in a landscape and her oil painting process.
Light Paintings
The doll that became an important, subject for Wendy while studying for her MFA
Belgian Winter Painting
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