Isobel Warwood - 2025 MBAS scholarship recipient

Nov 24, 2024
4 min read

Updated: Jun 5

Hello my name is Isobel Warwood and I'm this year's 2025 scholarship recipient. I’m currently attending Mercury Bay Area school as a year 13, taking Visual Art as one of my 5 subjects. Art is my favourite subject and it has always been something I've been very passionate about ever since I was a young kid, and I'm happy that I was given the opportunity to expand my knowledge about it and be able to meet amazing professional artists through Art Escape. In this writing I'd like to take this opportunity to talk about my experience and what this scholarship has taught me. I was able to meet up with Anne Bowden around April to discuss how the Art Escape scholarship works and what I was meant to do. I was very grateful for the help from Anne because without her I would have been a little lost on what I was meant to do. I believe it was a great opportunity to be able to meet someone from art escape beforehand that had so much experience with Art and being a part of Art Escape for many years.

In March I was able to work on my very own painting that I was able to submit in the Opening Gala of Art Escape at Hot Waves cafe. I had named my painting ‘Anthophilia’, the Greek word for a person that loves flowers. I spent a few weeks working on it, since I had trouble figuring out what I should do. But I was very pleased with how it turned out. It was amazing how I was able to see one of my own paintings being hung up with all the other Artists. Being able to walk around and look at all the paintings and art pieces that the artists spend so much time on was very fun, and being able to meet the artists in person was even more special. I had a really nice chat with the artists Sandra Hosking and her husband Mark, we had a very fascinating conversation on how they make their glass art pieces. I had never known that you could purchase different kinds of coloured glass. I met up with Anne again to choose two artists that I could meet and work with in their studios. I chose to work with Ginney Deavoll and Jane Parson. I met up with Jane for one day in her studio and she taught me all sorts of things about art that I haven't thought of before such as wax layering using cold wax, oil paint, texturing by using different tools to creating a scratching, different colour shading, print making and using anything as a way of creating artworks. I had a great time spending the day in Jane's studio and had a lot of fun learning from her. The second artist I chose was Ginney Deavoll. Every Friday evening I would meet up with Ginney after school to work on a painting together. I found the way that Ginney was able to teach me was a great way to learn. While she was working on one of her paintings, I sat beside her working on the landscape painting, she was teaching me how to paint the landscape step by step which was really helpful. I learnt many different techniques on how to paint landscapes such as Mixing water, white paint, and coloured paint while hatching to create a smooth blended background, using purple and blue paint to create depth and using old paint brushes to use texture. I also learnt how to make my very own canvas using wood, staples, and glue. I was very grateful for all the time that Ginney gave to teach me and I will cherish the experience that I had with her.

I was lucky enough to join the Whitianga Lions Club art expo and win first place in Visual Art with my painting ‘The Calling of Life’. My idea behind my painting was to have two well known New Zealand birds, a Tui and a Kea. The difference between the two is that the Tui is usually seen in many places in New Zealand flying around meanwhile the Kea is endangered so they are seen very rarely. That's why the Kea is a skeleton while the fantail is not, it symbolizes the endangerment of Keas as well as life and death. The kowhaiwhai between them represents spirituality and nature. Though winning first place in Visual Arts the competition I was able to get mentored by two other artists Souzie Speerstra and Kay de Blaauw. I visited Kay at her studio in Cooks Beach and she taught me how to paint an abstract landscape as well as abstract flowers. I’ve never done a painting where you used gladwrap to create patterns so I thought it was a great opportunity to try something new. I also met up with Souzie Speerstra and her adorable dog Luna at her studio in Tairua. I got the chance to take a look at all her paintings in her home as well as where she paints and she helped me work on a painting that I was doing. She helped me with the contrast, teaching me that using blues is better than using blacks as well as teaching me different things like using binder before I start painting, also colour balancing my art pieces, shading colours underneath then painting over top as well as using watercolour pencils to draw my outline instead of using lead pencils. Meeting with Jane, Souzie, Ginney and Kay and all the other artists has been a valuable experience. I was glad for my opportunity to experience and meet with all these great artists. I’ve been offered a place to study at the Massey collage of creative arts to study a degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts in Wellington. I was very grateful to have had the opportunity to be part of an amazing community of local artists, and I believe that my experience will help me to grow and become a better artist in the future.