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Understanding Distance in Aotearoa’s Canterbury Plains
In Aotearoa New Zealand, landscape is rarely neutral. It is large, exposed, and often indifferent. You do not simply stand in it — you measure yourself against it. On the Canterbury Plains, distance is not abstract. It is horizontal and visible. The horizon sits low and unwavering, while the Southern Alps hold their line at the edge of sight. Wind crosses paddocks without interruption. Roads run long and straight before disappearing toward foothills that feel both near and unreachable. In Reflected Ground, landscape is not scenery. It is distance — physical, psychological, and historical. The plains create space between things:…
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The Hare: A Symbol of Belonging and Home
This hare study explores how line direction, texture, and negative space work together in relief printmaking. By drawing in a woodcut style, the image tests how grass, fur, and light can be simplified into marks that will carve cleanly in lino or wood.
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Introduction of Hares into New Zealand
Hares were introduced into New Zealand in the 19th century for sport and quickly became part of the landscape. This article explores the history of hares in New Zealand and how they continue to influence art, printmaking, and ideas about land and memory.
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Reflected Ground: Exploring Identity and Landscape
Some landscapes function as scenery. Others act upon you. Reflected Ground emerged from the understanding that landscape in Aotearoa is not a backdrop, but an active force. As a New Zealand printmaker working in linocut, I have become increasingly aware that the land does not simply appear in the work — it shapes the way the work is made. In New Zealand, mountains rise abruptly from plains. Rivers braid and re-form. Weather shifts without negotiation. The terrain feels geological rather than decorative. To live and work within this environment is to feel proportion recalibrated. Identity, here, forms in relation to…
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The Power of Place: New Zealand
New Zealand does not announce itself loudly. It works slowly, reshaping your sense of scale, time, and attention before you realise what has shifted. In a landscape where mountains rise abruptly from plains and rivers refuse stillness, the land is not a backdrop but an active presence. To live here is to encounter space that does not immediately explain you to yourself. There are fewer inherited scripts, fewer assumptions about who you are or how you belong. For some, this openness feels disorienting. For others, it creates room — a rare kind of space in which identity forms through attention…
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Exploring Home and Belonging Through the Lens of the Hare
Why does the hare appear again and again in my linocut prints? In the Reflected Ground project, the hare has become a central figure through which I explore themes of home, belonging, vigilance, and stillness. Rather than symbolising speed or escape, the hare represents attentiveness — a way of being present within the landscape without claiming ownership of it.
