The fast flow of an artistic life
Kylie Wardlaw has been prolifically inspired since her move to Foxton Beach. Carly Thomas catches up with the artist at her home.
Light floods through a low window in Kylie Wardlaw’s art room. Paints, clearly touched that day, look fresh and ready on the table and finished canvasses claim the space too.
In her small Foxton Beach home, Wardlaw has dedicated a good chunk of her living area to her art. Her son has left home and she has been able to finally step into a time in her life where creativity is at the centre.
She paints every day now, for about two hours in the morning. She has always had a routine and started really getting into her art through her early explorations, fuelled by teenage angst.
Wardlaw laughs to think of the symbolic things she was into then.
But, she says, she matured more into using nature as her inspiration and landscapes and abstract impressionism have become her thing.
It was one of the reasons she moved to Foxton Beach from Palmerston North just over a year ago – the draw of the opening-up space of the estuary and the weekday quietness. The beach has a high percentage of weekend baches, so from Monday to Friday the settlement is often wonderfully unpopulated, she says.
The Foxton Estuary is a stone’s throw away and the smell of salt is on the breeze.
‘‘I have this beautiful vista two minutes down the road and it is always changing. Different tides and weather, there is always something new to look at.’’
Going from the hustle and bustle of Tremaine Ave to a little side street in Foxton Beach has meant the horizon and water lines are often a starting point for her preliminary sketches.
‘‘Before moving here I was more drawing from internal sources for inspiration, so coming out here has been great.’’
Her little dog Tess is also a walkbegging motivation for getting down to the shore. She is ecstatic when her lead is put on and good company too when Wardlaw hunkers down to complete her correspondence study through The Learning Connexion. That is another thing she is grateful for having time to pursue. ‘‘The Learning Connexion seems to have quite a broad definition to what creativity is. It’s open and I like that.
‘‘Having another pair of eyes on my work is quite good and I think my tutor has helped me engage my left brain a little and analyse the composition a wee bit more. I find starting really easy, the spontaneity, but now I am getting past that point to thinking: ‘Ok, what does this painting need?’’’
Listening to that advice recently, a landscape morphed into a beautiful spray of flowers, grabbing at the tones of lavender growing in many of the beach gardens she passes by on her regular walks. Colour is an absolute passion for Wardlaw and with her tutor suggesting she adds in some different shades she hadn’t thought about using before, her palette has grown.
‘‘I usually go towards medium tones, but now I am adding in dark and light tones as well. I had never really used black, grey and brown before.’’
Her work table is an eclectic jumble of acrylics, chalk pastels and art crayons. She also adds in texture to some pieces with tissue paper and ripped up brown paper.
Wardlaw trusts her instincts and her abstract paintings often start with a loose and gestural application of paint. She says she often surprises herself with what comes out on the canvas. Then they end up on her wall for a while.
‘‘It’s a good way of just living with them and looking at them. If there is an imbalance it’s easier to see it if you look at them a lot.’’
Her spread of canvasses has grown rapidly since she began studying. Wardlaw says she seems to be working quicker, with a steady stream of inspiration.
‘‘I need to stop buying canvasses, I think, and slow down a little. I am running out of space.’’
But she won’t be running out of ideas any time soon. The tide at the end of her road comes in and out without pause and the little dog at her heels begs for Wardlaw to put on her coat and grab her sketch book without fail. And where there is inspiration there is art.