Some projects take a little longer to complete than others, yet when they are done they seem to really create an impact. Such was my recent experience with a busstop beautification project I was commissioned for. About a year ago I was approached by the Rangatua Community Centre to assist with creating a 'quick win' project. Rangataua is a small village in the North Island of New Zealand. It is located at the southern end of both the Tongariro National Park and Rangataua State Forest, adjacent to the southwestern slopes of the active volcano Mount Ruapehu. And when I say a small village, it literally only has 160 residents as of June 2023. The busstop in question is the ONLY busstop for the school children in the village and as such the residents wanted to add some colour and pay homage to local fauna and flora. The artwork was designed to cover the entirety of the busstop. With Rangatua over 4 hours away from my studio, I set out to create artworks across 12 panels to be installed across the interior and exterior of the busstop.

After a couple of back and forths between myself and the Rangatua Community centre volunteers, we settled on two designs to use and I set to work in figuring out how to display these across the measurements and angles fo the busstop.

After many days and weeks of painting, with few sunny days to take my paintings outdoors and ensure all the artworks are lined up, I finally finished and we loaded all the panels onto a trailer and headed 4.5hrs south to Rangatua to do the installation. 

A few locals drove by while we were doing the installation, waving and smiling and the local children cycling past excitedly stopped by and told us how excited they were to come and wait at the busstop for their school bus now that there's some art to look at.

These types of projects really makes all the hardwork so worthwhile. Seeing the colours bring an old busstop back to life and hearing the excitement in the children's voices, watching their faces light up as they recognize the various animals and flowers, naming and counting them as they look and appreciate the beauty of their surroundings captured in art.

Thank you to everyone at the Rangatua Community Centre for trusting me with this project and allowing me to leave a piece of myself in your wonderful community.

At the start of the year I was commissioned to do a children's book illustration for a new author. Two stories, based on real events, made their way into my inbox and page by page I brought the characters to life. With loads of communication and direction from the author, each page started to take shape and now these books are available as ebooks, with plans in the works for hardcopy publishing within New Zealand.
These stories are short, but fun and adventurous and perfect for a quick bedtime read for the little ones!
Have a look at a sample of the first book "Naughty Nelly and Borring Bilbo - The great Escape" over on Amazon.