COMFORTABLY UNCOMFORTABLE

THIS WHANGANUI ARTIST CALLS HER WORK ‘MARKMAKING WITH PAINT’ AND REGARDS IT AS HELPING HER TO BEAT CRIPPLING DEPRESSION

Artist Fleur Wickes has gone from striving to thriving

WHEN SHE WAS a teenager, Fleur Wickes wanted to be a doctor. She studied biology and maths, chemistry and physics, convinced that medicine was where her future lay. But a chance comment from a friend set her on a very different path. She still concentrates on the human condition, but her tools are her camera, her computer, her paintbrushes and - occasionally - an angle grinder rather than a stethoscope or scalpel.

“When I was about 16, my sister’s girlfriend at the time told me, ‘I think you’d be great with a camera.’ I had a real crush on her, so I said, ‘OK, then.’ I started taking photos and realized that I loved it. And I particularly love photographing people.”

So Fleur left Whanganui, where her parents ran the roughand-ready local pub out at Ūpokongaro (“that was an education,”) and moved to Wellington, where she was the youngest person to get into the professional photography course at Wellington Polytechnic, now Massey University. After winning portfolio of the year, plus a scholarship for a second year, Fleur embarked on a new career as a portrait photographer. It seemed a natural fit for someone with a profound interest in others and a strong desire to find beauty in the unconventional.

“I did portraiture because I wanted to give people the gift of feeling beautiful,” she says. “I have a cleft lip and palate and, when I was younger, I had a really flat nose. Kids were pretty brutal, and I got called ‘ugly’ and ‘bulldog’ all the time. I used to think I was hideous, but one day I decided I didn’t want to feel that way anymore. For a whole year, I looked in the mirror and told myself I was beautiful. It sounds hideously cliched or cheesy, but it worked.

“It’s fascinating when you work with women [as a portrait photographer] you realize the nature of things they carry with them about their appearance. I genuinely like the way I look, and I like my body, but I guess I made that happen. I think most people are beautiful and it’s been an honour to be able to show people their own beauty.”

Fleur says Japanese decluttering guru Marie Kondo inspired the work, All of Myself Rising. “She was asked what her definition of joy was and she said, ‘ It’s when you feel all of yourself rising.’ I thought that was such a beautiful description of how joy feels.”