Meet Sharron!
Kia ora art lovers,
I am a New Zealand landscape and nature artist, focusing on capturing the stillness, transcendence and beauty of the natural world. My inspiration comes from the stunning scenery, bush and reflected light around the Pauatahanui Inlet and Porirua Harbour areas. This is built on a lifetime of affinity with the natural world, and an ongoing love affair with creative processes.
I am also an educator, working in primary schools as an early literacy support specialist, taking the lead role in visual arts teaching, and running a popular art club. Teaching is my third career and is the best thing I have done in recent years to supercharge my art practice. It is a joy to be around young people being creative. I find that I am more willing to try new methods. A reminder that the value in art is not always in the finished artwork, but in the doing - the enjoyment of the process.
My DSLR camera is a well used tool for capturing images that I can use in my art, and also as art in their own right. I am attracted to pattern, whether that is light and shadow playing across a surface, a pattern in a shell or piece of wood, or an arrangement of birds or animals. I love the natural framing effect of photographs, and how depth of field can be used to emphasize the subject. I’m partial to an interesting bokeh (the part that is out of focus in the background). Aspects of my understanding of photography filter into other areas of my creative expression.
My creative journey has been a lifetime in the making. Born in Taihape and raised in Waiouru during our early years, nature was our playground. DIY was strong in our family: my father handy with the tools, and a prolific gardener; my mother into handcrafts and sewing. There was always something being created, innovated, or repurposed.
We explored every inch of the local area. With the magical Mt Ruapehu, ever present with her volcanic rumblings, to snow in the winter turning the playhouse roof into a slide and creating opportunities to build snowmen (and women) with real carrot noses; hiding in the tussock over the back fence in the summer, to exploring Tongariro National park in the back of a bucking Land Rover; fishing for crawlies in the streams, and tadpoles in the swamp, with Mum’s best kitchen sieve; making mud pies, collecting slaters from the woodpile, and eating sun-warmed peas and strawberries straight from the garden.
This early immersion in nature set the tone for everything to come in my life. And for that I am so grateful.
We moved to Porirua when I was nine, with a nature reserve over the back fence, and Bothamley Park within a stones throw. I gravitated towards these spaces and towards every opportunity to hang out with animals, walking the neighbourhood dogs and helping out at a local horse riding business. I grew a deep passion for horses and saved up to buy my first pony, Chico, when I was 16.
Over the following decade I rode over many of the hills and tracks in the Porirua area, including: Bothamley Park, Cannons Creek, Belmont, Pukerua Bay, Colonial Knob, Whitireia Park, Pauatahanui, Paekakariki, Battle Hill, and the hills that are now the suburb of Aotea. I joked that I must be part goat, because I had such a strong instinct to climb to the mountain tops and breathe in the landscape. I felt very connected to these places.
I believed that I would have horses forever, but this season of my life had to fade to make way for another, as I went on to study for a Masters Degree in Public Health.
In public health my focus was on the broader determinants of health, which highlighted the importance of healthy natural environments for every dimension of wellbeing: mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, social and economic.
In this role I explored many issues, including: enhancing food security through home and community gardens, access to clean waterways for food gathering, the impacts of global warming on how we use and care for our local areas, how we construct our built environments, the walkability of our cities, having fresh air to breathe, and easy access to nature-based exercise options.
During these years, creative urges kept bubbling to the surface. I had many forays into the arts, doing short courses in drama, music, creative writing, pottery, photography and visual arts. As these experiences percolated through my life, visual arts rose to the surface as the ‘best fit’ for my creative expression.
Becoming a mother was a watershed, a turning point, for the significance of creative expression in my life. Bringing new life into the world was THE most creative act for me, and with it came to urge to do more with my art.
When my son was 18 months old, I enrolled in part time visual arts studies through Whitireia Polytech in Porirua. Over three years I was privileged to meet and learn from some great New Zealand artists, and learn the design processes and techniques that advanced my ability to express my ideas. With every brief that we were given, I explored ideas of nature, the land, and my relationship with it. My workbooks were full of visual ideas and my love of landscape and nature art began to be realized.
After art school, I returned to public health for a while, and my daughter came into the world. I continued developing my visual ideas and held my first exhibition, Taking Flight, with Clare Matthews, in Porirua; entered the New Zealand Art show for the first time, and took part in other local group exhibitions.
Then a change in government caused the bottom to fall out of my industry. I was made redundant from my role and, in a period of limbo, I did some teacher aide work at my daughter’s school. I came to see the magic and inherent creativity in working with children, and took the opportunity to retrain as a primary school teacher.
As mentioned at the beginning of this page, teaching is the best thing I have done in recent years to supercharge my art practice. It is a joy to be around young people being creative. I find that I am more willing to try new methods. A reminder that the value in art is not always in the finished artwork, but in the doing - the enjoyment of the process.
It’s funny how, in a convoluted way, my journey has brought me to where I need to be, for who I am and what I can offer. I am excited to have made the commitment to establishing Sharron Bowers Artist as a vehicle to both fuel and feed my art practice, so that I can share my love of the natural world with you.