Karena de Pont

Karena de Pont is a Mahurangi West based artist with a diverse artistic practice encompassing painting and sculpture. COVID lockdowns forced Karena to look at what she had at home that could be used as a foundation for her paintings and this exploration is the starting point for all her current works.

In her BURNT OFFERINGS series, Karena has used local Mahurangi scenery as her inspiration for her most recent works and for abstract works within this series the inspiration has come from the colours viewed on the long road trips taken across America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in recent years. Using recycled cedar boards made up into panels, the original compositions are transformed through fiery sacrifice with the application of intense heat causing paint to bubble colours to shift and the cedar boards to crackle and char. This metamorphosis is a testimony to sacrifice, transition, and transformation echoing burnt offerings in the past.

AND IT WAS SAID series began by using up the photopaper supplied with her new printer. Using the translucency of coloured inks, these small abstract works celebrate lyrics and quotes that evoke an emotional pull and the power of words in our lives.

In her sculptural art practice, Karena’s painted bamboo poles are transformed into EARTH STICKS to become the focal sculptural point of any garden whether they stand individually as sentinels or in a collection as a family gathering and have become very popular.

Karena’s mixed media wall sculpture ISLANDS series uses recycled pine batons. This series celebrates what our many offshore islands mean to us in Aotearoa, New Zealand. The use of light and shadow enhances the colouration of these abstract painted works. Karena would welcome commissioned requests to recreate your favourite Island.