Making their mark
Each year Dunedin School of Art is transformed into an art gallery exhibiting a range of eclectic works by its students across a range of genres — painting, print or photography, jewellery, electronic arts, ceramics or sculpture. Rebecca Fox talks to thre
AN interest in natural history art works and science shines through in Elaine Mitchell’s paintings.
The former Otago Girls’ High School pupil won the 2015 Celebrate scholarship which is given to a high school student to attend the Dunedin School of Art.
That award was critical as it changed her path from science to art.
‘‘It was a really big shock as I was planning to do sciences at university.’’
Instead she changed her plans and enrolled in the Dunedin School of Art.
While the programme enables students to try different forms of art, Mitchell always knew her heart was in painting.
‘‘It has the ability for you to do the things you want to do and I like the way you interact with it and have the ability to create a twodimensional world.’’
For her thirdyear work, Mitchell decided to change the scale of her work, going largescale so the animals she features are lifesize and created in a natural history biologybased structure.
‘‘The dimensions are right. There were a lot of calculations to figure that out.’’
She finds watercolour paints give her the control, effect and pinpoint accuracy she likes and it make sense for the natural historytype works she is doing.
‘‘When I was younger I watched my grandmother use it and I thought her work was really cool.’’
Mitchell has not left her science background behind. Her work is based on natural history art works and feature species which have an interesting history or are endangered.
‘‘I take the visual rules of natural history and use them for a different reason.’’
One work features a cave hyena inspired by a story about animal bones being found in a cave in England that were first thought to be cattle but turned out to be from tigers and lions and other wild animals normally found on the African continent.
‘‘They were really confused about how they got to be there, finally figuring out it was to do with the Ice Age and climate change.’’
She has included bones in the work to refer to the story of discovering the fossils.
Mitchell titles each work in the style of natural history works using Latin and calligraphy.
Another of her large works, Palmyrene features the critically endangered Northern Bald Ibis of Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa.
‘‘They have such a rich history. There are stories of them in so many different cultures.’’
One of the few remaining tiny populations was in a Syrian city in Isiscontrolled territory which had been destroyed.
When the conservationists working with them had to leave, there were only two or three birds left.
‘‘They don’t know whether they’ve become extinct or not. The city has been blown up. It’s really sad.’’
Mitchell is still deciding what she will do next but is considering further study.