Anne Bannock
Anne was a very enthusiastic participant in our 2013 exhibition so I felt quite confident in asking for her reaction to my idea for this year’s exhibition. Anne’s always quick to respond and came back to me saying, sounds interesting, I’d be keen to see a selection of your poems. So I bundled them off to her with an assurance that if there was nothing that appealed to her, I wouldn’t be wounded, offended or worried.
Not one to hang about Anne replied that evening saying there were 4 poems she would like to claim. And last night she emailed me her artwork. We were totally impressed and so were our neighbours, Jan and Murray. We’ve lived side by side for over 25 years so they’re quite used to popping up in my poems! Anne happened to pick a “Jan ” poem and the likeness is “remarkable” says Jan. We are all very amused.
Introducing Anne Bannock
Colouring books and crayons were my favourite Xmas and birthday gifts when I was a child in the 1940s. Later my father gave me old log books which had some unused pages. These were my drawing books for several years.
Lost
I left secondary school with a Diploma of Fine Arts preliminary, with the hope of going to Art School. However, art was not considered a useful occupation so I trained as a nurse. During my student nursing years I made a visual diary using ink and watercolour. These sketches were later reproduced in several publications about Christchurch Hospital.
Marriage, three children and dairy farming in the Waikato/King Country were busy years, but with encouragement from my husband, I was able to attend various art related workshops including an etching course tutored by Susan Flight. I eventually bought an etching press and was able to produce etchings at home as well as oil and watercolour paintings.
In 1981 we moved from our King Country farm to a lifestyle block in the Orinoco Valley near Motueka, a beautiful place with hills, rivers and mountains, and nearby beaches. There were plenty of old rustic sheds on our block and two of them – the old cowshed and the shearing shed – now serve as my studio and gallery. They are open to the public during the summer.
Over the years I have had nine creations accepted for The World of Wearable Art show and been a finalist in the Telecom phone book competition six times. Paintings have appeared in numerous solo and shared exhibitions.
Weaving the Wisteria
In 2010 I enrolled with the Learning Connexion, an International School for Art and Creativity. I joined the Honours class as a part-time distant delivery student. I’ll finish my Advanced Diploma of Art and Creativity at the end of this year. Since starting the course I have become interested in more abstract ideas and enjoy working with mixed media using watercolour, acrylic, soft pastels, charcoal, fabric and found objects. Although I still work in an illustrative style I am enjoying searching for the essence of a subject to produce an abstract result.
If you’d like to see more of Anne’s art have a look here
