Hi, my name is Siobhan Cox,
I am a year 13 at Mercury Bay Area School and I take Visual Arts or Practical Painting as one of my subjects. I’ve been in visual arts for three years now and got the opportunity of being 2024’s Mercury Bay Art Escape recipient at the end of 2023.
Through this, I got to reunite with one of my primary school teachers, Margaret Gibson, who introduced me to the world of art. Margaret taught me how to express my thoughts through the arts of different mediums and textures, which as I got older and started to understand my paintings, I’ve learned to love having different statements in each piece I create.
This scholarship gave me an opening to reconnect with Margaret through working with her and the Whitianga Art Group and learn more skills that I would then use in my future bodies of work.
I met with Margaret mid-April and worked with her mainly on Saturdays at the Old School hall in Whitianga. It was a special opportunity that I was glad to have had with Margaret as I felt it was very important to me to show her that I’ve still kept my passion for paint and how far I’ve come in terms of my development.
One of the main things that I enjoyed when working with Margaret was being able to learn about the different responsibilities varieties of paints had and what they were best used for. From this, I was able to understand what series of paint I was able to use to further enhance my paintings through either creating washes or detailed aspects of my pieces. Another opportunity that I was gratefully granted with from Margaret was getting the chance to participate in an Acrylics class. The acrylics class was an introduction to developing a sense of freedom using acrylics. Bruce Treloar was the artist that ran the class. He showed a variety of his pieces that were created with a technique of using a black gessoed canvas/cartridge paper that was then drawn on with chalk.
Essentially you draw your composition with the chalk then paint in and around the chalk, then wipe away the chalk with a damp cloth to bring back the black gesso underneath as a sort of outline to the composition to give it dimension and enhance the layout of the painting.
This type of art style gave me an opportunity to learn how to create art that had a different aspect of style that would hopefully, give a more sense of depth within the meanings of what I’m wanting to portray. (I did use this technique in some of my pieces for my art folio this year but am not able to share these pieces until they have been assessed.)
I was also able to get involved with the Lions showcase competition. The painting above is what I entered. I was grateful that I got this opportunity as I hadn’t painted birds in a while, so for me this was a good way of getting the pleasure to paint something that I’m really passionate about.
The experience from this scholarship has let me learn from all different backgrounds of people that I interacted with at the old school hall. I loved going to the hall and seeing what everyone was creating with the different mediums they painted in. I felt that I became closer to my passion for art with this opportunity as I’ve felt a little lost in what I want to do in the future.
The help of this opportunity has put me back into rhythm with wanting to keep art in my life as I move onto the next stepping stones that I’ll be facing and I’m really grateful that I got to spend it with Margaret and the Whitianga Art Group
The beginning of my art journey - 2023
"My ideas behind my paintings was to bring awareness to the extinction of native birds in New Zealand.
I chose the Huia because it is already extinct. I chose the fantail as I took inspiration from the meaning in Maori culture.
I used a variety of artists as inspiration within my paintings, such as Franz Marc, Shane Cotton , Fiona Pardington and Alex Pardee.
I wanted to create an environment that captured the sadness that the birds feel within the story of my paintings. It was important to keep the form of the birds as real as possible and I learned along the way on how to bring the emotion from the birds to life and to the people that see my work."
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