Creative Matters with Leigh Tawharu

Leigh Tawharu, is a contemporary mixed media and printmaking artist living in Kaeo, Te Tai Tokerau in the far north of Aotearoa NZ.

Her work is created through various techniques and mediums which seek to explore surface texture, pattern and design on paper. She is influenced and inspired by her surrounding landscape of maunga (mountains), native bush, fashion, textiles and still life from within her immediate domestic environment.

This is the best conversation and I absolutely loved meeting Leigh. We initially connected when I inited her to exhibit a work alongside my own thread paintings in a group show I'm involved in with Muriwai Arts Collective. As our conversation went on we found more and more connections between our work and the way we think.

Leigh speaks about the immense pleasure she gains from the object and the cloth, the memories they hold and the cathartic practice of repetitive stitches, which provides a daily early morning exercise in mindfulness. She shares how she finally devoted herself to studying fine art in 2018, how she uses printmaking and painting in her work and how she manages threading on paper.

We discuss her various series of works she has done over the last few years, using thread and different mediums such as shellac, gold leaf, collage and ball point pen, and how they all connect. We have great chats about all sorts of interesting things like nostalgia and how that creeps into our work, sales at shows, imposter syndrome, how we both feel connected to our land and place and how her work responds to the environment around her. Leigh goes into fascinating detail about all the different processes she uses to bring thread into her work.

Once again please excuse my blocked up croaky voice in this episode.

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