Art shapes life.
And life shapes art.
And few know that better than Dunedin artist Janet de Wagt.
De Wagt has drawn heavily on personal experience for her latest exhibition, "Shape of Things to Come", which opens in Dunedin this weekend.
"It's a whole year's work," she says.
And it's been quite a year.
Last year, the 52-year-old ("Going on 20," she quips) was diagnosed with breast cancer following a mammogram.
"I had to get one of them off," she says, with typical candour.
"For a while it was like 'Oh, my god, I'm going to cark it'.
"The funny thing was; it wasn't losing a breast that worried me so much, as losing the nipple. I suppose that's because it's an erogenous zone."
One of the 20 works in the show, Catch a Nipple off the Telly, highlights the nipple loss.
"This exhibition is partly about having to change the way I paint.
I used to do up to four [paintings] a day, but I can only manage one now because the muscles aren't there any more, which makes it really hard.
It's [the mastectomy] changed the way I work, both mentally and physically.
"But that mammogram saved my life. I'm going back to the hospital next week for my first yearly check-up."
The exhibition has also been inspired by how people experience art.
Since 2005, de Wagt has been the Artquest Trust Fund artist in residence at Macandrew Intermediate School, where she uses a classroom as an open-access studio.
"I act as a mentor and show the kids that it's possible to be an artist. They can see someone making a living as an artist and see that it's a viable career choice," she says.
"Students pop in at lunch time and work, which I enjoy.
A lot of students enjoy working with me and I am able to reach those students, particularly boys, who find it hard to achieve or express themselves in other subjects.
"I work with the art teacher. We plan together and share ideas. I get paid for the organised contact hours I have with the students and community groups and the rest of the time I devote to my art-making," she says.
"Last, but not least, I have an amazing studio with power provided."
De Wagt says one of the most rewarding aspects of her role is collaborating with local community groups, such as the CanTeen children's cancer support group, the elderly and women who have head injuries.
"The women, who are usually very isolated because of their injuries, have flourished in the school setting," she says.
"I work with lots of groups of people and am always looking for ways to make art more accessible for everyone."
This led to the development of her "Art in Mind" technique - stencilled shapes which can be incorporated into a work, creating almost an optical illusion.
"The 'Art in Mind' thing started when I had a residency at Ross Home.
I was dealing with older people, so I had to find new ways of doing art, because of their movement limitations," she says.
"Young people, I've found, are really into stencilling, but I find it a bit boring, because you're really just spraying paint. I like to use brushstrokes and to combine the stencilling with the paintwork.
"I load up the brush with lots of colours and manipulate the brush, doing layers on layers. I don't use any pencils or drawings; I just start at the top and work my way down. I like getting into the brushstrokes of the painting.
"At first, you just see the normal painting, but then you start to see what else is there."
De Wagt is something of a gypsy artist, whose passion is painting en plein air - or "in plain air".
She has lugged her paints and easel to the remotest corners of New Zealand, outback Australia, the Cook Islands and the Black Forest in Germany.
Another series, "New Paintings from the MG", featured 18 paintings painted from the bonnet of an MG sportscar while travelling around Otago.
"I always paint on site. I start it there and finish it there. The only thing I do back here in the studio is sign it," she says.
"So if it's windy, you get sand and seeds and insects in it [the paint]. The most sandflies I've ever had in one painting is 42.
"I like to link the subject with the area connected to it; like, Waimate with wallabies. There's also a piece that looks at that whole discussion about John Wilson [Ocean] Drive, where the penguin population is supposedly increasing. That used to be one of my favourite painting spots."
