Happy New Year everyone! I hope you are excited for what 2024 may bring and are planning lots of exciting adventures!
For those of you who don’t know I’m an artist who loves spending time outdoors and soaking up the natural environment. Over the past 2 years I have been working on a painting of Lady Emily Hut in the Cass in the Glenmore Station near Lake Tekapo.
Built by the Murray family the hut is situated above the main valley on a ridge with expansive views all around. The snowy peaks in the background tower to 2433m and feed into fresh streams that flow on either side of the ridge that the hut sits on and eventually water fall over the edge to the valley floor.
When I visited the Cass it was rainy, claggy and even lightly snowed one night, but one evening the clouds suddenly lifted, the sun intermittently peaked out, I was off. I made a mad dash to Lady Emily and was chasing the setting sun up the ridge as the clouds blew away. So here the painting is finally completed.
Lady Emily in the Cass, Glenmore Station, New Zealand
St Arnaud Range is very easily accessed from below, in fact so much so that I took my kid’s along the range recently to explore one of the places I find most beautiful. Here is the route that we took along the range and down Powder Valley. Also some...
Not much sleep was had sausaged between two kids that flung their arms into my head all night long and with a full moon lighting up the tent, but I emerged well rested and to a most spectacular and still morning. A few of us wandered around exploring the plateau while others stayed cocooned inside while the first fingers of sun...
After many seemingly endless weeks painting in the studio and in the middle of the school holidays before the first winter snow, the perfect weather window approached. Boots, packs and gear were scattered throughout the house half packed and ready to go, however I was still only half committed. The looming dread of listening to the kids 7 & 8 fight, whinge and moan while I carried over a third of my body weight up 1100 vertical meters...