Joanne Mahoney

Joanne Mahoney is a painter and printmaker, living and working from her home studio in Pirongia in the Waikato after living in Whangamata for many years. To see Joanne's work currently showcased at The Little Galleries please click here.

Born and brought up in the Wairarapa, her childhood holidays were spent at Ngawai on the southern Wairarapa Coast, where her love of the sea began. 

Painting was something Joanne began learning while living in Singapore, where she took lessons in traditional Chinese brush painting techniques for two years. On returning to New Zealand, she took further classes in traditional watercolour painting and developed her practice in shoreline still life. Her love of the coast meant countless hours were spent beachcombing, and later documenting her findings in her preferred medium of watercolours, which enabled her to bring out the delicate nature of shoreline subjects.  

Over her painting career Joanne's fluency in a variety of mediums has expanded to encompass mixed media painting and drypoint, collograph and chine colle printmaking as well as watercolours. 

Now using the process of collage in many of her works, all these practices have a place.

"I love the idea of repurposing materials, prints and paintings into my artworks."

Joanne also does ink drawings of offshore islands on marine charts.  Her husband left his marine charts lying about and she had a good idea!

Having spent many years travelling around the world to places in Africa, Asia and the Pacific Islands, Joanne attributes travel as an ongoing influence for her work. An Eastern influence is particularly apparent in her more recent still life print works, distinctive in their simplicity, flatness and use of media such as rice paper in chine colle techniques.