My home and studio sit in the Pohangina Valley, in the foothills of the Ruahine Ranges, where I live with my family and work in close relationship with the land around me. Farm life, seasonal rhythms, and daily noticing shape both how I live and how I make.

I have been a practicing artist for over twenty years, balancing creativity alongside motherhood, rural life, and small business. These experiences are not separate from my work, they are central to it. I am interested in home not as something fixed, but as something tended: shaped through repetition, care, and the often-invisible labour of daily life.

My paintings are rooted in storytelling. Drawing on my English heritage and its folk traditions, and holding them within the landscape of New Zealand, I explore ideas of belonging, identity, journeying and re-rooting across place and generations. Animals, both native birds and English woodland creatures, appear in my work as companions, messengers and witnesses rather than symbols, carrying quiet narratives shaped by land, memory, and attention. Nature is not a backdrop in my paintings, but an active participant, informing palette and presentation of the work.

My process is intuitive and slow. A painting often begins with a moment or a presence that asks to be noticed, and then unfolds through listening, layering, and restraint. I am drawn to materials that hold nostalgia, history and texture, and to surfaces that allow for layering of both material and meaning.

At the heart of my practice is a deep dive into what I have named The Real Work of Art: On Practice, Persistence and Return. The work examines the commitment to keep making through cycles of doubt, criticism, and uncertainty. It is a practice shaped by the interruption of thresholds, and the inevitable return, by learning to stay with the work even when it resists resolution, and by trusting that meaning is built through persistence rather than ease. This work is shaped by the quiet commitment to keep showing up, even the work remains unseen.

Through my paintings, I seek to create spaces of stillness and nostalgic resonance, where story, place, and the living world are held and stay in a moment.

Nicola x