A Kāpiti secondary student who only started painting two years ago, has been chosen by visitors to
Toi MAHARA Young Artists Exhibition as the winner of the People’s Choice Award.
Charlie Dale-Low’s work Passing by, which depicts a street scene in Vietnam also won the Secondary Student Artist’s Award at the inaugural exhibition held at Toi MAHARA, the contemporary public art gallery in Waikanae.
“I wanted to capture the vibe that Saigon had,” Dale-Low said. “There was a unique and interesting balance between chaos and calm.”
“I tried to recreate that feeling by layering multiple scenes to create one piece. My aim was that the blocky and blurry pieces of the painting would make it feel fast paced and energetic while the facial expressions would help to mellow it out and give it that balance.”
Of the award, Dale-Low says, “I was honestly pretty surprised when I won the Secondary Student Artist’s Award. There was so much cool art in the exhibition that the prize could have gone to anyone.”
“Winning the People’s Choice was even more surprising because it meant that not only did the Toi MAHARA judges like my work, but others did too.”
Dale-Low is a recent arrival to Kāpiti, coming about six years ago after travelling around the country with his family in a house bus.
“We decided to park up here and build a house. It’s a mint place to live; cool people, a sense of community and great beaches too.”
Dale-Low learned about the exhibition from his art teachers at Paraparaumu College.
“They encouraged our class to submit work and then mentioned that we could use pieces from our NCEA art boards. I was super keen on the idea as I was really happy with how some of the paintings on my board had turned out.”
Although Dale-Low is focusing on his last year at high school, he’s still finding time to paint and has started doing murals, most recently at Kenakena School.
“It’s a challenging but fun little side hustle so I definitely plan on doing more of those.”
The Toi MAHARA Young Artists Exhibition will be held biennially.
