Annie Mein’s Rakiura Sketchbook
Over 40 years, many many women have contributed to Spiral. Annie Mein is one of them.
Annie–
The landscapes are from Rakiura, Stewart Island, New Zealand.
I had had an idea of being a hermit artist down here for some years, and finally got the chance to make that happen.
I came to Rakiura to enjoy the freedom, quiet, open-spaces, waves, sky, colours etc. I spent many childhood holidays here, and as an adult am overwhelmed my its huge, expansive, ever changing beauty.
I didn’t know what my intention was. But I decided to start with what was outside my front door. The landscapes are not literal, but more a sensation of recognisable features.
I was an art student in the early 1990s at Otago School of Art. At art school, in addition to drawing, I was a photography student, but good photographs are stand-alone works. Here, I use my bad photographs from excursions to inform the sketches, influenced by wood block prints and local artists Colin McCahon, Nigel Brown and Toss Woollaston.
I simplified the drawing media I chose. Charcoals, conte, addition, subtraction, no added white, with only the compositional ideas and tonal shifts to use. But how do you do justice to those colours, shapes, textures and grandeur with only black? This was the challenge I took on.
Annie’s permission must be obtained before any re-use of any of these images.
