Creative Connections

Tallulah Nunez was born in Wellington and raised in the Hawkes Bay. She is a painter currently based in the remote Gascoyne region of Western Australia, with a strong creative connection to New Zealand. Her practice is grounded in place — exploring the rich textures, colours, and forms of arid landscapes, native botanicals, and geological structures.
Working primarily in drawing and painting, she uses layered mark-making, and gestural linework to reflect the raw beauty and quiet resilience of the land. Her style is intuitive yet grounded in observation, often blending abstract impressions with botanical and environmental detail.
Tallulah had a traumatic upbringing and suffers from a number of mental health issues including Obessive Compulsive Disorder, Dis-associative Identity Disorder and Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Tallulah generously shares her life dealing with these challenges and how painting, particularly repetitive mark making, is a positive way for her to respond to and process her life and mental health.
This is another unique, enlightening episode I know you'll enjoy. Nga mihi, thank you to Tallulah for her honesty and authenticity and for highlighting mental health issues in the way she has and for explaining how being an artist has supported and created a 'safe space' as a person dealing with mental health illness. 
https://www.instagram.com/tallulahnunez_studio/
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Kylie King-Hazel is a portrait painter living in Pōneke Wellington. 
https://www.instagram.com/kyliekinghazel/
Kylie's practice inhabits the space of a soliloquy - an internal dialogue shaped by uncomfortable questions and self-reflection. It begins as a love letter to her Māori husband and children and moves to questioning her responsibility in creating work shaped by love, proximity and relationships.
Kylie's practice sits intentionally in an uneasy place and explores the uncomfortable question of what it means to be Tangata te Tiriti in Aotearoa. Rather than finding resolution, her work is shaped by ongoing questioning and reflects her responsibility as a Pākehā artist, wife and mother.Through painting she explores the emotional and political weight of portraiture, where gaze, visibility, histories, relationships and power dynamics combine, considering the accountability of making work in relation to Māori.
This episode is unique, thought provoking, authentic, beautifully honest and even raw and emotional at times. 

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See our website for more about us and artist blogposts with images + links of the things we talk about in each episode.

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Tracey Coakley is a narrative oil painter working primarily in figurative painting and portraiture. Born in Melbourne, Australia, Tracey has lived in New Zealand since 2007 and now works from her studio in Waipu, Northland. 
https://www.instagram.com/traceycoakleyart/
Predominantly self-taught, she has been painting since 2000 and working full-time as an artist since 2017, completing a Diploma of Visual Arts in 2006. Her subjects are often friends, family, and self-portraits, and over time have included her children as they navigate from childhood into adolescence and adulthood. 
BETWEEN US
Art That Connects
Opening Day Ceremony
16th May 2026 2-4pm
Depot Artspace, Devonport, Auckland
https://www.betweenus.co.nz/
https://depot.org.nz/
https://www.instagram.com/figurativeartnz/
This exhibition has been developed to showcase the plurality of voices in contemporary figurative art and portraiture in Aotearoa New Zealand by exploring the rich themes of identity and lived experience with a goal to expand audience appreciation for the genres of figurative art and portraiture, and foster greater expression and connection in our communities. 
We start talking about this show 1 hour and 6 minutes in to this episode. Tracey and Karlalise would like to sincerely thank Depot Artspace in Devonport for their wonderful venue and all their support.
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Creative Connections Website
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Lynne Sandri is a contemporary artist and a curious idealist living in Seatoun in Wellington. 
With a career spanning over 25 years as a full time artist Lynne has had over 100 exhibitions and numerous artist residencies, she has built studios and opened them to the public, she's taught students and mentored artists and she sells just about everything she makes throughout NZ and internationally.
Lynne’s artwork delves into the beauty of nature, the cycles of life and the evolving concept of home and being a care-taker of land. She’s a maker, curator and collector with an insatiable appetite and curiosity for art in all its glorious forms.
I see Lynne as an amazing experienced role model for artists with some sound advice. as well as a damn good human! In this episode we talk about the benefits of art communities, creating and opening her studio to the public, stepping away from being represented by galleries and why she has chosen to do this, why she loves working 'her own gig', and how she sustains her practice by thinking creatively and outside the box as well as taking calculated risks and her business like approach to her art career.
As a past judge, selector, member of the board and part of the founding team of the NZ Art Show, and a guest judge in other art shows, Lynne shares her experiences selecting and judging art. 
Lynne talks in depth about her various series, including floral paintings on long rolls of canvas that gather on the ground, her landmark paintings, painting on books, her still life and landscape paintings, and her heavily textured sculptural paintings.  http://www.lynnesandri.co.nz/
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Creative Connections Website
See our website for more about us and artist blogposts with images + links of the things we talk about in each episode.

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Jo Tricker is a glass artist based in Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty, Aotearoa NZ.
Jo creates glass fused, slumped, cast and lamp worked objects that are shaped by a love of literature and travel and the people from different cultures that she has met along the way.  
Jo is an exuberant storyteller. In this episode she talks about her younger life living in the UK and studying English and linguistics at Massey University and her initial love of mosaics which 14 years ago led to learning about glass screen printing, lamp working and glass fusing. She shares why she only now feels she's getting to really understand what she's all about as an artist and why she does what she does. Jo works in series which often use different techniques or are based on different ideas. She explains how she juggles the various series of work, her time making as a busy mother and how she manages being an extrovert alongside spending so much time alone in her studio. And she describes the process for her most current series Mythology of Fruit.
Jo shares some excellent advice, philosophies and reflections for artists and people wanting to develop a creative career.
https://www.jotrickerglass.com/
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Creative Connections Website
See our website for more about us and artist blogposts with images + links of the things we talk about in each episode.

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