Brush work

Painter Katherine Throne studied painting on a whim, but it is hard work and determination that have built her burgeoning career

- Sally Conor

You studied at two different art colleges. How did this come about? Two years into an interior design degree at Kendall College in Michigan, in the US, I had a hunch I was missing out on something. The students on the painting floor above us seemed to be having way more fun.

I switched my major to painting, even though I’d never done a class – I just had a feeling it was where I belonged. It was a move that immediately felt right, and my love affair with paint began. At the end of my first year of painting I was awarded a Merit Scholarship.

Suddenly we’d been in America nine years and wanted to raise our two adopted daughters as Kiwis, so in 2014 we moved back to Auckland. I knew very little about the art world in New Zealand so I decided to continue my master’s at Elam to get an idea of how things worked here.

Delving into the art world led me down the path of art history, and that became my thesis. The flower emerged as this feminine icon of design, and I realised it was a wonderfully powerful motif to explore.