STYLE INSIDER

Artist Micky Light’s quirky Auckland cottage brims with colour and character

An Auckland’s artist’s cottage brims with nostalgia.

Micky Light aims to make every day in her Grey Lynn home a little more magical. Spilling over with art, dried flowers, old English crockery, squishy sofas, frilly cushions, pretty ornaments and her own artworks, the small home and its country-style garden are romantic and nostalgic.

The pink cottage is different to others on her street – she was told that it was the first concrete block home built by the Winstone building supply company. She can’t verify that, but it does have the original light switches and door handles.

Micky is happily bohemian and embraces a simple existence underpinned by a love of nature. “I don’t believe in trends,” she says, “I just do my own thing. I definitely love things from the past and I just like to create. I’m not afraid of colour and I don’t follow rules.”

Micky’s friend Steve Sygrove, “an amazing artisan builder”, helped her reconfigure the house and built an art studio in the garden, where two egg-laying bantam hens roam among the flowers.

Her bedroom opens to the garden and is another addition; the wardrobes are filled with her kimono collection. “I have too many clothes,” she admits.

Micky’s paintings reflect her magical domestic environment and have a delightful ethereal quality. She’s currently inspired by Chagall and a narrative running through her works tells of her past: her childhood in the UK, living on an ashram, marriage and motherhood, moving to New Zealand in the 1970s and becoming a midwife. But they’re always grounded in the beauty of nature, particularly flowers, her constant delight.

ABOVE FROM LEFT Micky Light wears one of the many vintage kimonos she has collected since the late 1960s. She values the craftmanship involved in vintage clothing pieces which are displayed like artworks around her bedroom.

CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE Every surface of the living area, with its original marble fireplace, is covered with decorative china and flowers; fabric used for the tablecloth and curtains came from the bargain bin at Martha’s Furnishing Fabrics in Newmarket and Micky sewed them on her old hand-driven Singer sewing machine. Some of Micky’s flower paintings are on display in daughter Posy’s room, who is currently flatting (see more at railwaystreetstudios.co.nz). A painting by her artist friend Johnny Hurford behind the wrought iron day bed in the lounge makes Micky feel like she is living under an iris.