'East of Eden' wins art award

Bay of Plenty Polytechnic’s Visual Art tutor, Nicol Sanders-O’Shea, has had another win at a prestigious art show – the Molly Morpeth Canaday Awards, which have been running in Whakatane for 25 years. 
 
Nicol’s body of work, East of Eden, won a Merit Award despite edging out a high calibre of submissions from 86 other artists from around New Zealand. Judge Richard Fahey described Nicol’s work as “… a witty skew on the familiar and domestic, a collage from many sources, executed with a pop sensibility.”
 
When discussing her work, Nicol says she has a real interest in the crossover from her ideas of family as a child, and the flipside of now being a parent and having her own children.
 
“There’s a light and dark side to family,” she says. “In my work I like to explore the nostalgic view of family that’s idealised but not real. It’s also an honest take on the mixed reality of child-adult relationships.”
 
Nicol has been teaching on the Polytechnic’s Bachelor of Creative Industries since its inaugural year in 2014. As the Programme Coordinator, she will be overseeing the third year students as they prepare to exhibit their own work later this year.
 
She is also exhibiting at Wellington’s Matchbox Studios in a show called Flock and will be involved in the East exhibition in Hawkes’ Bay.
 
Nicol’s tip for being a successful and prolific artist is simple.
 
“Make, make, make,” she says. “It’s important to keep working and have something ready to go that you can adapt for exhibitions and awards.”
 
East of Eden is a set of nine works, acrylic on board, and has been sold to a private collector.