Waikato Society of Arts 2013 Painting and Printmakers Award

Joanna Fieldes - New Zealand Artist

Joanna Fieldes (nee Abraham) is an Auckland based artist who is carving out a strong reputation for herself with a unique vision of her country and culture. New Zealand's colonial past is a central recurrent theme.

Through her elegant oil paintings she articulates a form of storytelling by juxtaposing the imported with the indigenous. Using a rich imagination and strong painterly style, Joanna places traditional European domestic vessels in typical New Zealand landscapes. Her colour palette is familiar and seductive [to any New Zealander]. Joanna's work points to the challenges that biculturalism presents. There is a tension in her work which provokes question.

Joanna is a self-taught artist who has pursued a distinctive style of her own, unencumbered by conventional modes of representation, to produce paintings that are instantly recognizable for their particular vernacular. Jugs and bowls in anthropomorphic guise totter about in a deftly conjured landscape of "anywhere" New Zealand.

In Joanna's painted worlds, vessels are a vehicle for ideas… containers of history that link past to present. The artist offers no firm conclusions but rather offers up her ideas as food for thought and stimulus for discussion in an on-going cultural debate.

Joanna has work in public and private collections both here and overseas, she has been invited to participate in successful public gallery exhibitions and has had critically acclaimed shows in leading dealer galleries.

"With my paintings I aim to make people hesitate so my marks have a better chance of being looked at, being seen again, to evoke thought and awaken the mind," – Joanna Fieldes