\u201cI clearly remember my mum always outside painting somewhere with her easel and palette and, of course, paintings were everywhere.\u201c<\/p>\n
After graduating from Elam Art School and doing an OE, Davis discovered and fell in love with the East Cape landscape and its people. <\/p>\n
She lives in Wharekahika\/Hicks Bay close to her two daughters and 11 mokopuna. <\/p>\n
At 63, Davis retired from teaching art to secondary school students on the East Coast. Since then she has been able to concentrate on her own art practice.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy oil paintings are all about energy, light and movement. I am especially obsessed with depicting water. <\/p>\n
\u201cI love that the sea is never static and never predictable. This seems to me to symbolise life itself, which also presents us with challenges and the unexpected.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ocean is central to Pru Davis’s new exhibition titled Going with the Flow. \u201cI love that the sea is never static and never predictable.” Photo \/ Kim Parkinson<\/p>\n
Her art has evolved over the years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I\u2019ve got better at painting water, but it\u2019s taken years of practice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Art has always provided her with a living. In France, when she was on her OE, she used to set up her easel on the pavement and draw people\u2019s portraits. <\/p>\n
\u201cI also used to do little paintings of scenery and sell them to tourists.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2023, she had an exhibition at Tair\u0101whiti Museum called Landscapes, but she prefers the relaxed atmosphere and intimate setting of the Matawhero Art Gallery. <\/p>\n
Davis paints from photographs and will sometimes do a rough sketch before beginning a painting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI usually paint furiously on a new canvas for a couple of hours and then go back and layer it up. I often have several paintings on the go to allow time for the paint to dry.\u201d<\/p>\n
The exhibition, titled Going with the Flow, is running at Matawhero Art Gallery at the cellar door of Matawhero Winery until May 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI clearly remember my mum always outside painting somewhere with her easel and palette and, of course, paintings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1228,1628,442,498,499,500,1975,11586,56447,501,3806,156,4296,8815,1229,13458,42899,100597,6187,103808,111,139,69,11599,199337,199336,57723,15146],"class_list":{"0":"post-384060","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-artist","10":"tag-arts","11":"tag-arts-and-design","12":"tag-artsanddesign","13":"tag-artsdesign","14":"tag-at","15":"tag-coast","16":"tag-davis","17":"tag-design","18":"tag-east","19":"tag-entertainment","20":"tag-exhibition","21":"tag-explore","22":"tag-gallery","23":"tag-inspired","24":"tag-landscape","25":"tag-likes","26":"tag-lives","27":"tag-matawhero","28":"tag-new-zealand","29":"tag-newzealand","30":"tag-nz","31":"tag-ocean","32":"tag-oceaninspired","33":"tag-pru","34":"tag-showcases","35":"tag-works"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}