Mailbox 08: Mel McKenzie
Appeared in The Southland Times on Tuesday 27 August, 2024
Bathing In It
Oil on Canvas
‘Bathing In It’ is an invitation to the depths of the forest where sunlight meanders its way through the canopy and the hustle of modern life is washed from your soul.
Forest bathing – or Shinrin-Yoku – was initially prescribed in Japan as an effective antidote to tech-boom burnout and to reconnect the urban population to nature.
Through this soft, blurry bokeh painting you can imagine yourself lying under a tree, dappled light spilling into your face, your worries and cares melting away.
Mel McKenzie – The Penny Drops – is an award winning artist who specialises in bokeh paintings. With oil paint as her preferred medium, she creates soft, blurry iconic scenes from around Murihiku Southland – beguiling, but always familiar. These landscape paintings are both abstractions and also fairly true to the deliberately blurry reference photographs Mel takes. She loves the way bokeh strips away the details (the minutiae of life) and grows light into delicious ‘orbs’ of colour and hope. In this way art is a metaphor for life, shifting our focus from the nitty-gritty details to the beauty and light always around us.
You can see more of Mel’s work by visiting her:
[Website]: www.thepennydropsart.co.nz
[Instagram]: https://www.instagram.com/thepennydrops_artist/
[Facebook]: https://www.facebook.com/pennydrops
