Arwen Flowers

"Lady and the Deep Blue Sea" A. Flowers 2019

Arwen Flowers

Arwen Flowers is a New Zealand-born artist, raised in the beautiful ranges, forests, and beaches of the West Coast of Auckland. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Art Degree (BFA) in the early 90’s, specializing in painting and photography at Elam School of Fine Art, Auckland.

Arwen’s recent artwork on canvas utilises a unique mix of media—dressmaking patterns, graphite, charcoal, metallic foil and paint. Through this unique multi-media approach Arwen references landscape and oceanic forms while exploring intersections, crossovers, and parallels between historical and modern European and Pacific Island cultures, often from a feminine perspective.

‘I’m curious about the experience had by indigenous South Pacific women and the wives and daughters that had been brought to settle there from England and Europe, when they met and needed to live along-side each other. How did they feel? What sorts of influence did they have on each other?’ she says.

Arwen sources materials to use in her art from second-hand shops or recycle centres to create small collages on paper as a way of experiencing creative joy and freedom. The collages evolve naturally into combinations of craft and pattern which reflect her historical European ancestry and her place of birth in the South Pacific. Arwen’s larger work on canvas expands upon those initial collages.

Arwen will be based in the Helensville Memorial Hall for the ARTS in the VILLE Labour Weekend )ct 26^th-28^th 2019.