JANE SMITH
BRADEN FASTIER/ STUFF //
JANE: We moved to New Zealand in 2002. Before that, we were living in London and both working in design and advertising.
We had friends here, but never visited New Zealand before, not even on a holiday.
When we first came here we did a tour, which took us to Nelson. We love it there. But as Neil had his job in Christchurch we lived in Diamond Harbour for years.
Then in 2010 we moved to Māpua. We both love it here. We live in a very nice, sensible modern house that we don’t have to worry about. We liked the fact that there was nothing to do. We wanted somewhere where we could get Neil out of the print business and into photography.
I started doing illustrations for books about three years ago. Before that it was graphic design.
I also do some volunteer work for the Superhero Project, a worldwide project that’s run from the US. They work with children with serious illnesses to create personalised superhero posters.
They provide a brief on what’s needed, and you design an illustration. And then the child gets a poster.
Neil and I are now side by side, all day, every day – working. We work in the same studio area at home.
Our days usually start with very strong coffee in the morning. Archie gets up at 5.30am, so he wakes us up.
We do like the mornings and in the summer when it gets incredibly hot we’ll often work from 6am until midday. Then we might go swimming or paddleboarding and start work again late in the afternoon.
I have always loved dogs and Neil has had them
when he was a kid. One of the first things we did when we got to New Zealand was get a golden retriever named Napoleon and a chocolate lab named Monty. And then a friend gave us a kitten, that was Soufflée.
Monty was incredibly intelligent. He was such a character that we named the business after him.
We had their ashes here in boxes for ages and didn’t know what to do with them. Then I saw this company in Christchurch that make stones from ashes.
We were really pleased with their work and now we have those beautiful stones out on display. And everything was handled very sensitively.
We had a break from animals before we got Archie. We decided to travel and do some stuff you can’t do with dogs. And then when Neil thought he was ready for another dog, I found Archie in a quick search on my iPad.
Animals are all different, and they all have their own character. I think you have to have sympathy and empathy for them to be able to illustrate them.
I always have a sketchbook in my bag. I just can’t resist lovely paper – several of my notebooks were given to me by friends. One of them is covered in Japanese paper – and has raw paper inside. When Archie went in for a little op, I used that to sketch him when he was recovering.
The black and white picture of me and my mum always makes me smile every time I look at it, my mum’s legs are very long and elegant. I got my father’s legs, and he was a footballer.
My mother-in-law was a perfect cook and the old scales were hers. I would think they were her mother’s at least – probably from the 1920s or something like that. I was close to my mother-inlaw – she was a small, ferocious Scottish woman, and she was absolutely lovely.
She wasn’t happy when we first moved out here, but then she came to visit, and she just slotted in to life and would stay for months.
I have been back to the UK to visit my father and brother recently. It was wonderful. But I couldn’t live there again. It’s far too busy.
We both love Māpua and our home here. When it comes to interior style, we like things that are well-designed.
Everything is painted white, and we’ve got some of our own work on the walls – the rest is the stuff that is meaningful to us. This is a house that is definitely lived in.