Claypole draws prize with Fallen Women

Her drawing titled The Thief won this year's Carey Smith & Co Whanganui Art Award and the artist says she's a bit like a thief herself.
Katherine Claypole's latest series of graphite drawings, tentatively titled Fallen Women, were taken from the Australian Historic Houses Trust website.
The black-and-white photographs were shot in Australia in the 1920s, in prisons and police stations. They show criminals and lost girls. The portrait that won Wanganui's most prestigious art award was of Valerie Lowe, who, with a male companion, was arrested for the second time in 1922. The two had broken into a New South Wales army storehouse and stolen coats and boots worth nearly £30.
The period from 1920 into the 1940s appeals to Claypole, for its clothing and stories and also because the distance of time adds an element of mystery.
"I wondered what happened to those women. Some of them have disappeared. I'm interested in tracking them down, but Valerie Lowe probably isn't still alive," she said. Claypole has entered the art award each year for the past few years, and was surprised to win the top prize of $1000 earlier this month. The money would be going into her studio practice; buying materials and helping pay the rent of the house she shares with a daughter. One of its rooms is her book-lined studio. She hasn't had time to spend the money or dwell on her success, though.
A part-time drawing teacher for Whanganui UCOL fashion, glass and computer graphic design students, she's busy planning next term's classes.
Claypole got her first arts degree at Auckland's Unitec, and went on to get a Master's degree at Canterbury University's school of fine arts. She moved to Wanganui in 2004.
"I needed to find somewhere that had an art school, and that had reasonably priced houses. I have a sister that lives here, and I like the Sarjeant Gallery," she said.
She's been teaching at UCOL for the last few years, and divides her time between that, making art and being a mother. She was trained in painting, but said her art was project driven and she didn't mind which medium she used. Now it's drawing, but she could easily move on to knitting or something else.
Shows during the past few years include a group show called First Home Buyers, about the kind of house categorised by real estate agents as a "handyman's dream" or "fixer upper". That happened at a time when she and others despaired of ever being able to own property. Since then she and fellow Wanganui artist Sophie Klerk have done a Paperwork show, using old papers to create images with a nostalgic element. She's now trying to decide what to enter in another group show at The Green Bench. It happens in September during the Whanganui Literary Festival and will be on the theme of reading.