Award-winning artist and top athlete Jane Harper to stage first solo art exhibition
Talented Castle Hill artist Jane Harper has taken off her running shoes and picked up her brushes to prepare for her first solo art exhibition to be held in Christchurch in July.
Harper was first woman home at the weekend in the gruelling 32km Routeburn race through Fiordland and Mount Aspiring National Parks along the Routeburn Track, named one of the Top Ten walking tracks in the world.
Harper won the woman’s event and was 30th among 312 competitors. Her partner won the race in 2hours 53mins 20seconds, a whopping 18 minutes ahead of his nearest rival.
Harper, also an award-winning artist as well as a top runner and skier, will hold her exhibition at Gallery O in the Arts Centre from July 10 to 12. The exhibition highlights her national concerns about the spread of wild pines that ruin native bush and other areas.
Harper won last year’s Canterbury phone book front cover art award and spends a lot of her time in the outdoors, seeing pines take over pristine areas.
She said pines were springing up on farm land, national parks, reserves and nation bush areas all over New Zealand. The wilding pines were blighting the traditional Kiwi landscape she said.
``Around my home in Castle Hill and other areas all over the country, wilding pines, are taking over native bush and we need to launch more native reforestation projects,’’ Harper said today.
``My art focuses on our natural heritage and I hope the event raises awareness of the importance of getting rid of the wilding pines. My neighbour heads a reforestation project and they are always needing funding and volunteers to be able to continue the work of taking out pines.’’
The pines, introduced to New Zealand in 1860, are a serious nuisance above the bushline and in tussock grasslands and they create a major intrusion and damage natural ecosystems. They don’t offer berries or nectar to encourage birds and insects and the pine needles form a carpet which discourages regeneration of the native forest floor.
The former Cashmere High School student is inspired by the South Island landscapes which she studies to produce her paintings. Her attention is often captured by the interaction of light and shadow, especially in the early morning or late afternoon, the times which she considers the most enjoyable to be outdoors.
Nearly all her landscape works for the exhibition are painted in such a way as if the viewer is looking down a path while out hiking, as to encourage people to get out and enjoy New Zealand’s natural beauty.
Harper, an international mountaineering ski racer, exhibited at the Castle Hill bi-annual art exhibition last year and sold all her paintings within the first hour of the opening. She was presented with the People's Choice Award for one of her paintings at the end of the exhibition.