Faded Photographs | The Art Shed Napier

Fresh off the easel, Faded Photographs is currently curing and soon available at The Art Shed Napier. Contact Paula Sugden for more information. 

Inspired by the colourful old weatherboard houses along the Napier waterfront, this painting reflects on the passage of time and the memories we attach to places.

I lived briefly in Hawke’s Bay when I first arrived in New Zealand, and have fond memories of our little rental beside the Tūkituki River. Napier became our weekend haunt, and the old waterfront houses always caught my eye. Returning to them through painting has been a way of revisiting a place that holds a special chapter in my early life in New Zealand.

Each building has its own character, bringing to mind the many layers of colour, changing occupants and lives that have passed through them. Loosely reimagined through my own architecture, the familiar streetscape takes on the softened quality of a faded photograph — a place remembered rather than precisely recorded.

Some places stay with us long after we have moved on. This work is a quiet acknowledgement of those places and the memories that remain.

Medium: Acrylic on canvas 

Dimensions: H500mm x W500mm