Wendy Matenga
Wendy Matenga, from the town of Nelson in New Zealand, is a painter showing with Antler Gallery for the first time. She grew up amid a semi-nomadic lifestyle in her a retrofitted bus that her dad had equipped for the purpose of being wherever he needed to dredge for gold. Inspired her mother’s desire to paint flowers whenever they stopped in any one location long enough, she now paints beautiful floral arrangements. Her focus is on utilizing the ways in which light interacts with her subjects to paint what she sees as the truth in them rather than a completely realist representation.
Matenga’s aim is to evoke the feeling a bouquet brings to a room, or the emotion of receiving flowers as a gift. She accentuates, enlarges and embellishes the elements of the still life she feels are speaking to her most fully.