Capturing the rugged great outdoors
Nelson artist Caroline Bellamy combines two of her passions and makes them a fulltime job – tramping and painting.
Influenced by her walks around the South Island’s rugged wilderness terrain, Bellamy returns to translate them with broad brushstrokes dipped in oil colours to create contemporary landscapes.
She said every journey back to nature was ‘‘beautiful’’.
‘‘They’re really emotive, so you kind of bring it back into the studio and try to sort of recreate or bring back some of that experience into the painting.’’
Bellamy has always had a creative side, studying art throughout high school and taking five art subjects in year 13. She graduated from the Ilam School of Fine Arts in Canterbury in 2016 after completing a four-year Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in painting.
And it’s clear the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.
‘‘My family is quite artistic. My Dad studied at the same art school, and my Mum was an illustrator in her younger days.’’ One of her older sisters, Michelle, is also a fulltime artist.
When Bellamy laces up her boots and packs for the great outdoors, it’s usually somewhere around the island she knows best, including Fiordland, South Westland and Canterbury, ‘‘all the way up to Nelson’’.
‘‘A lot of New Zealand is really remote and untouched, so being able to reach those places and experience that, and bring those back into a painting, is quite unique.’’
Bellamy’s passion for getting back to nature and the arts recently created an amazing and ‘‘totally unexpected’’ opportunity – she became the face of retailer Kathmandu’s World Ready New Zealand campaign.
It stemmed from an article written about her in Wilderness magazine. The piece was spotted a year later by a Kathmandu employee, who thought she’d be perfect for one of its short films. ‘‘Before I knew it, I was in Queenstown filming.’’
She said the experience let her ‘‘reach an audience’’, making people more aware of who she was.
Back in the studio, Bellamy is preparing for her Light + Wild exhibition and thinking about her next goal – applying for a Community Engagement Programme in Antarctica, which would take her art from rugged landscapes to white, below-zero terrain.
Caroline Bellamy: Light + Wild opens at the Parker Gallery, Achilles Ave, Nelson on November 20 at 5.30pm and runs until December 11.