2025 started with a gentle current, just one or two small projects and one large KiwiRail corridor to be painted. Since then, it's been a bit more busy and seemingly all at once people decided a large scale artwork is needed to spruce up their spaces!
I am currently working on projects for four different schools in Auckland, as well as waiting on better weather for a Northland project, and heading off to Great Barrier Island during the holidays for a holiday workshop for the rangatahi on the Island. 
During the same time I've completed illustrations for another picture story book, as well as created some education resource illustrations for a swimming instructor and enjoing having my eldest as my intern for part of her schooling! She submitted a design for a mural and the clients absolutely loved it! She did so well in keeping to the art style I've developed and I look forward to painting her design in the coming weeks.
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A couple of months ago I caught up with a friend whom I haven't seen in a while and her little boy had grown from a newborn baby into a curious and adventurous little toddler. I had previously painted her daughter a princess castle in the clouds and I asked what piece of art she would like for her little boy's room. "He loves space and he loves Dinosaurs." she said...so I created the Astronaut T-rex! Hopefully this piece will age well with him and he will have many years of enjoying the adventures of this Astro-T-Rex!

Late last year KiwiRail kicked off their pilot project for Auckland railway beautifications.
Along with other artists, my design was chosen, as one of 6 to kick of this initiative. The railway corridor is known as a graffiti hotspot and by commissioning arttist to beautify these spaces with murals, the hope is to curb tagging and give the communities something beautiful and vibrant to look at, whilst also spreading awareness around safety around the railway. 
My design incorporated some favorite birds and flowers from across New Zealand, along with bold colours and patters to fill out the space along the safety messages in a bold, graffiti-like font.
The site I applied my design to is the one nearest to my home. Being able to help beautify and uplift the local community was a privilege and I hope my design will resonate with the community passing it by on their way to work or school. 
KiwiRail hopes to do more of these to uplift communities, and I for one fully support spreading more art and joy through the city!

This project was a bit of a monster really. And I didn't really realise that until our first day on site. Site visits was a bit hard to come by, as this site is right next to the railway tracks, so getting an RPO organized to come and take you for a quick site visit is, uhm...difficult. So quoting and estimating time frames are all done via a few photographs, or 'drive-bys', neither of which gives you the reality of what a 4 metre high, 160 metre long concrete wall, with uneven walking surface along it, and being 5 metres from a live train line, really feels like. Or the logistics required to actually paint at such a site...
The walk from where you can park to where you start painting is a good 150 plus metres itself. Carrying paint. And water. And anything else you might need, because walking that 150 metres is on rough terrain. The first week after walking that my feet were throbbing and I discovered I had muscles in my feet that I didn't know I had before!! Safety boots to work with is a MUST!! 
And once you are at the site, with an RPO (Railway Protection Officer) in tow, one realise that 4 metres is a whole heck of a lot taller in real life than in a photograph.
Due to the uneven surface, my optimistic thought of using a Mobile Scaffold, was quickly squashed. A ladder would have to do. But only a Fibreglass one. But wait, we don't know if our permit allows that yet. No, we have to wait until the trains have an offline 'block off' for maintenance and then we can use scaffold (not a mobile one) or a ladder.
So for the first two weeks we did what we could with the bottom section of wall. And when I say we, I mean myself and an apprentice and for about a week even Edgar joined in.
The weather was not our friend for a while and then it was and then it wasn't. We only had 6 weeks to complete this and at least 20% of that time it was raining. 
It certainly was a challenging project. One I am extremely happy to have done and finished. I have learned a lot and I look forward to the next  challenge!
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Who else cannot believe we're a quarter of the way into 2025 already? It's been a slow, but good start of the year for business, and the next few months ahead is looking incredibly busy for me, so I'm actually quite grateful the first three months has been easy-going.
I happily teamed up with some students from Scott Point School again during March, to create some smaller colourful artworks to bring colour to their playground area. The students worked fast and hard and we smashed out 12 mini-panels in 6 days!
We worked around the colours of their school houses - Totara (blue), Pohutukawa (red), Rimu (green) and Kowhai (yellow).
The yr 2 students came in and painted some background colours on one day and the rest of the background colours were filled in by the yr3-4 students, while the yr5-6 students spent time painting the base coats for the finer elements and the yr7-8 students finished off the artworks with the final details and outlines.
It's always such a pleasure to see the children experience how an artwork look at the start and compare it to the finish product - even the teachers still get amazed at the process and end result. 

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