Scenery steals the show

Landscape art involves the depiction of natural scenery and the Bay of Plenty region has many fine landscape artists.

Creative Tauranga has put together a group show of six established and emerging artists. They are: Peter Wallers, Michael Sass, John Towers, Fay Thomson, Wayne Vickers and Yulia Nikulnikova.

Peter Wallers has been painting professionally since 1973, exhibiting in many New Zealand centres as well as Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Mainly self-taught, Peter is a dedicated traditional artist. His distinct style has been described as clean, crisp and strong.

He paints mainly in oils but enjoys working in other mediums such as pencil, gouache, chalk, pastel and acrylic.

Michael Sass became a permanent resident of New Zealand in 2000, and has fallen in love with the beautiful and diverse scenery.

His preferred medium is pastel on board, and he has developed a technique that enables him to produce the level of detail his paintings display.

John Towers is a Realist painter who resides in Mount Maunganui. Also a keen photographer, John's paintings are generated mainly from his own images.

His works are predominantly coastal scenes from around Mount Maunganui.

Fay Thomson enjoys painting a wide variety of subjects in both watercolours and oils, and for the past two years has been especially drawn to painting some of the beautiful scenery of the South Island.

Her painting of Doubtful Sound was selected for the inaugural Miles Award exhibition at the Tauranga Art Gallery in December/January 2011.

Wayne Vickers is a self-taught artist, apart from a single weekend course with Tim Wilson in 2009. An avid tramper and hunter, Wayne spends a lot of time in New Zealand's back country, finding inspiration for his paintings of primal bush and mountain scenes.

Yulia Nikulnikova is a self-taught artist living and working in Tauranga. Born and raised in Russia, she arrived in New Zealand 10 years ago.

Recently Yulia has developed a passion for oils and enjoys painting New Zealand landscapes, which she says is the most beautiful scenery she has ever seen.

This exhibition is at the Creative Tauranga Gallery on the corner of Wharf and Willow Sts.

Opening night reception will be tonight at 5.30pm. The show runs until July 31.