Tamzin Blair

Kia ora, I live in Ohope in the Bay of plenty, New Zealand. I suspend New Zealand native leaves and grasses in resin and create artworks and lamps. I’m also a painter and use acrylic paint on canvas with resin to create emotive portraits.

I have always loved light though nature and as an artist puzzled how to capture that beauty.  Light surrounds us at all times, a mysterious substance that gives life to everything, but can’t be held. When I see an artwork, it is the gaps between and inside the artwork that hold as much beauty and are as much a part of it as the physical work. If you notice the gaps between branches in a tree where light shines or in a skeleton leaf the tiny holes that allow light through - somehow light is part of the artwork of nature. Resin for me has some of these mysterious qualities, you can add a little colour and watch it held, suspended like smoke in the air. Light can shine through it and be part of its art. It adds depth and makes solid all those intangible things inside of light. You can hold a clear piece up to the light an imagine you hold a piece of nothing.

Lenard Cohen of course said it best when he wrote the lyrics ‘forget your perfect offering, there is a gap, a gap in everything. That’s how the light gets in.’ He celebrated the gap and with my art I want to do the same, celebrate the light, the pieces of air that exist between us and are so full of life. I want to celebrate the places where the light gets in.