Eketāhuna artist hoping to make a splash

Deborah Illingworth will be exhibiting her work at the Crown Lynn Kiwi shop and gallery in Eketāhuna, opening Labour weekend. This work is titled: Life Cycle of the Death Lily.

Artist Deborah Illingworth found it a little funny when she won the Emerging Artist Award at the Wairarapa Review at Aratoi last year.

Now based at Nireaha, she has been painting for 25 years, but sees the award as being less a reflection of her age and skill level and more her being a new exhibitor as artists living in the Tararua District were able to enter for the first time.

Deborah will be exhibiting a collection of her works at the Crown Lynn Kiwi shop and gallery, opening Labour weekend.

The shop is a new venture by Mathew Nisbet, who is also a former neighbour when they lived in Wellington.

Mathew is launching the shop in the old Wrightson’s building on State Highway 2 in Eketāhuna where he makes pottery from the old Crown Lynn moulds.

Deborah will be the first resident artist exhibiting in the gallery space.

Deborah says she spent most of her life in rural South Auckland and moved to Nireaha five years ago to be closer to her mum in Masterton and sister in Carterton.

“I do have strong ties to the Wairarapa and Wellington and it very much feels like home here.”

She grew up in Wellington but left for Auckland after 17 years to study at university, gaining a certificate in graphic design from Auckland University of Technology (AUT).

Deborah says her pictures have a pathos, a quiet sadness and are reminiscent of the “theatre of unease”.

“My portraits are often tense with underlying narrative.”

She says she has been selected as a finalist a few times in the Adams Portrait Award and her landscapes have been compared by critics to the likes of Rita Angus and Bill Sutton.

“At present, I am fascinated by the world of strange undersea creatures and how they appear oddly at home in outer space or using them to create tension in what would be a normal landscape.

“Not that my landscapes are ever normal. Perhaps it is just what is previously unseen is at last appearing.”