David James

David is an artist, a gallery director, and a leader in the burgeoning art & faith movement in Aotearoa, New Zealand. His contemporary art practice focusses on the sensitivity and control of traditional figurative drawing, challenged by disruptive techniques that allow emotive and prophetic narratives to emerge and express our humanity in relationship with our creator. David holds an undergraduate qualification in Visual Arts majoring in painting and drawing, and achieved First-Class honours for his Masters degree in Art & Design.

David also directs ATELIER Studio|Gallery, an art & faith initiative founded in 2018 with the specific mandate to support, represent, and promote artists of faith. ATELIER is a key strategic initiative in the landscape of art, faith, and Christianity in Aotearoa NZ that seeks to raise the importance and value of creativity as an essential expression of the nature and identity of God to both the church and the world.

David, together with his wife Nina, have three beautiful adult daughters and reside in Nelson, New Zealand. As co-founders of the Atelier Ministries NZ charitable trust, they oversee the three core components of ATELIER: the studio, the gallery, and the church community.

www.atelier.org.nz
Instagram: @atelierstudiogallery
Instagram: @davidjamesartist

Jill Smith

Jill is a New Zealander of Pakeha (English & Irish) and Maori descent (Tainui), born in Whangarei in 1953 and currently living on the Awhitu Peninsula, south west of Auckland. Her growing up years were spent in Whangarei, Geelong & Melbourne (Australia), Auckland and Palmerston North. While training to be a teacher in Palmerston North, she studied art as a special focus, and went on to teach a range of age levels and curriculum areas, including art, from lower primary through to high school year ten. After marrying Don and in the midst of raising four children together, Jill went on to study and work in education, church ministry, counselling and art therapy – integrating interests in creativity, learning, theology, and health and wholeness for individuals, groups and communities.

Jill’s art practice has developed through different seasons of family, work and community life. A consistent theme has been an interest in exploring the significance of the Divine Presence as the integrating factor, source and purpose of all creation.

“We look at this Son (Jesus) and see the God who cannot be seen and see God’s original purpose in everything created… everything got started in him and finds its original purpose in him… So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken, dislocated pieces of the universe – people and things, animal and atoms – get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross.” – Colossians 1:15-23 MSG

Jill’s art bears witness to a life-long experience of seeing, feeling, being immersed in and deeply moved by the landscape of Aotearoa, and within it, an awareness of the Divine Presence. Early challenges, with the death of her mother, changes in family dynamics and battles with her health, focussed a desire to understand and experience the harmonising, healing, integrating way of Jesus for herself, and also for others.

The therapeutic value that she experienced in creating art, later led her to study in the M.A. Arts Therapy program offered by Whitecliffe College of Fine Art, completing with honours in 2006. Her thesis researched and proposed an Art Therapy approach that integrated Christian spirituality and world view in safe and effective practice. Jill has participated in a few group and solo exhibitions and now works from her studio/rooms in Pukekohe as well as with Uplift Church in Pukekohe and other churches around New Zealand.

Charles and Janine Williams

Charles & Janine Williams have spent the past 20+ years using creativity as a tool to bring about social change. From urban spacial design to shifting mindsets about street art or to using murals as an opportunity to tell the stories of the land. Each project is unique & builds upon their belief that ‘art can change the world!’.

Married for 19 years with 4 teenagers, life is busy including travelling around Aotearoa & the world (pre-covid) involved in numerous street art festivals, projects & events. Involved in various forms of church leadership including pastoring at Faith City in Manukau throughout the past 20 years, they know first-hand the impact of prophetic creative application regarding communities, churches, seasons & spaces.

Business owners, full time artist, parents & lovers of Jesus – their passion is to share their journey & to encourage the artisans to value their craft remembering its importance in building the seasons to come.

www.charlesjaninewilliams.com
Charles Instagram: @charles_phat1tmd
Janine Instagram: @janine_divatmd

Amanda Watson

My painting practice investigates ways of registering experience of place through the painting process, specifically I work with environments to let them participate in the making of a painting. Whaingaroa, Raglan has been my home for the last 22 years, and before that spent my early years in Taranaki. A combination of spending a lot of time outside in the outdoors, and a fascination for painting my experience of environments, has grown my painting practice.

I was awarded a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts from Auckland University where I majored in painting, a Postgraduate Diploma in Museum Studies from Massey University, and a Masters of Arts in Painting from Waikato Institute of Technology. Since 1995 I have enjoyed painting and exhibiting regularly around New Zealand and overseas, and during 2018 attended a contemporary drawing course at the Slade of Fine Art Summer School in London, where I explored a broad spectrum of drawing which has informed my way of painting.

My work has been exhibited, reviewed and shared through solo and group shows, award exhibitions, editorials, published reviews, and accessioned into public collections. You can find reviews of my work on EyeContact and #500words, in exhibition catalogues published by Calder & Lawson Gallery, Ramp Gallery, and by visiting Foenander Galleries in Auckland. Alongside painting I have worked as an independent curator and exhibition designer for Waikato Health Memorabilia Trust, a researcher and writer for Creative Waikato and Wintec, and in arts strategy and research for Hamilton City Council. I have served on the Hamilton Public Art Panel, on the Raglan Community Arts Council, as a fund assessor for the Hamilton City Council’s Performing Arts Fund, and founded the Raglan Art Trail Guide & Open Studio Weekend, and the Raglan Combined Artist Studios and Gallery.

www.amandawatson.com
Instagram: @amandawatsonartist

Simon Hunter

Simon Hunter is a Nelson based artist. His current practice combines screen printing, stencil and painting processes to create work that explores layers, traces and histories both in the physicality of the work and the ideas he engages with.
Hunter uses, binary code, text and varying coloured layers of paint to create contemplative and introspective surfaces.

He currently works for the Arts, Media and Digital Technologies school at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology.

Dean & Jo McQuoid

Dean and Jo are passionate believers, who love to serve prophetically through worship and the arts.

They fell in love leading worship together 25 years ago, and continue to serve through itinerant ministry nationally, internationally and in their local fellowship at Coast Vineyard in the Hibiscus Coast, where they live with their 2 teenage sons.

They have been a part of the Christian band scene, church leadership, worship directing, prophetic art, recording projects, evangelistic outreach, both internationally and throughout Aotearoa, and this year saw them release their first full length album ‘The Strength of Stones’

www.themcquoids.hearnow.com
Instagram: @mcquoidsmusic

Artist’s Communion

As an end-piece to MAJESTY 2021, participants are invited to take part in an Artist’s Communion. During this time, we will be given the opportunity to Receive, Respond, and Re-Align to the beautiful cry and call that comes from the very heart of God – to know Him, to devote ourselves to Him, to lean in on His grace, and be empowered for his purposes in us as ambassadors of creativity, beauty and redemption.