Painted blooms come alive
Nelson artist Wendy Matenga uses brush strokes to play with bouquets, writes Anabela Rea.
Artist Wendy Matenga is a quiet-natured woman with a talent for bringing blooms to life with paint. If you’re a social media arthound, you will likely recognise her work; large-scale depictions of bouquets in muted, dusky tones that verge on the photo-realistic.
A relatively emerging artist, Matenga has only ben painting since her family’s move to Nelson three years ago. She had previously never had time for art. A solo mother to her son Bastian since the age of 18, the now 30-yearold had had her hands full.
It was the support of her husband Kelvin that pushed her to share her art with others. ‘‘My husband has really encouraged it,’’ she said. ‘‘I don’t think I would have tried it as much as I have if it hadn’t been for him.’’
Her debut was in a low-key cafe exhibition in the area, which mostly sold out, and caught the eye of fellow artist and gallerist, Fleur Woods. Matenga sent some of her art out to Woods’ gallery in the Upper Moutere and ‘‘it’s all progressed from there.’’
Matenga grew up a like a modern gypsy: her family lived in a house bus and travelled across southern Otago as her father dredged for gold. She puts her fascination with flowers down to the gardens her mother would plant around their transient home.
‘‘Mum has always had a massive flower garden. If the bus was in the same place for more than six months, she’d plant flowers,’’ she said. ‘‘I love dahlias. And my grandad used to plant dahlias so I think that might be why.’’
Partly home-schooled, Matenga spent her teenage years at Maniototo high school and did art by Correspondence school.
She loved ‘‘creating stuff’’ rather than drawing or painting and was the only girl on the rugby team until teenage interests blossomed. It was in third form that she realised she ‘‘definitely loved painting’’ but didn’t pick up her brushes again until after Bastian was born.
Self-described as ‘‘too impatient for oils’’, Matenga works in acrylics and paints blooms almost exclusively. She finds their shortlived loveliness an enchanting paradox to try and capture.
‘‘I find it bizarre. Their beauty is kind of fleeting. And it has so much meaning when you give someone a bunch of flowers, you can give so much joy,’’ she said. ‘‘I just really do love the way that you can put them by a window and look at the light on their petals and all the colours, but they’re so fragile.’’
The meaning of the word ‘‘bouquet’’ continues to be a theme for her work. ‘‘It’s a creative arrangement of flowers and I like to play with that on the canvas,’’ she said. ‘‘Adding contemporary brush strokes is my way of playing with the flowers rather than like a florist.’’
‘‘Also, I try to capture the feeling of having flowers in the house. It just brightens it,’’ she said.
Instagram has played a big role in Matenga’s success so far and being a largely shy person, it’s a format that works for her. ‘‘All I have to do is post pictures, I don’t have to talk to anyone face to face,’’ she said, laughing.
It’s all low key and local. Her studio is in the spare room of their family home and she obtains the flowers she immortalises mostly from the local florist. Her creative process is similarly straightforward.
‘‘I usually grab flowers and think, ‘wow’, then take photos and work out the colours. Or see a colour palette that I really love. For example, pink and mustard. So I’ll grab some pink roses and a mustard jug.’’
The smallest work Matenga has produced was 30 centimetres by 30c, and the largest, 2 metres by 1m. Respectively, they ranged in price from $600-5000. Most of her works are in the middle, at around 80cm by 60 cm and cost $1500-2000.
She could likely complete a medium-sized piece in a week, but prefers to keep each work in her studio for about a month and half. ‘‘You can get too tight,’’ she said, ‘‘so if you leave it for a few days you don’t overwork it.’’
Rather than stress about making sales, if it ever came to it, Matenga would ‘‘happily’’ get a part time job and retain the enjoyment that painting gives her.
‘‘I do it because I really enjoy it. I’m pretty lucky that I’ve got my husband to support us and do what I can to top us up. I don’t want the joy to ever be taken away from the painting process,’’ she said.
On the easel right now at her place is an artwork depicting Cafe Au Lait dahlias, one of seven pieces for a show that will soon be shipped to Portland, Oregon, US. ‘‘I guess my style is not your typical Kiwiana style.’’