Mal Bouzaid has a long and passionate association with the sea and has spent most of her life on or beside it. She grew up on Auckland’s Northshore, at Takapuna and has spent many years sailing the Hauraki Gulf. For the past 15 years she has lived at Port Fitzroy on Great Barrier Island.

In 2000, Mal returned to Whitecliffe College of art and completed a MFA. Her post graduate study gave her the confidence to shed some of the more figurative elements in loosely impressionist style and simplify her painting into sophisticated and contemplative abstract compositions that, in their subtlety, remain redolent with salty air.

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Artist’s Statement

In earlier work I focused on the quiet reflective nature of bush, streams and ponds.  I examined the way light dances across the surface of the sea.  Over time my work developed into horizontal bands of colour, the abstracted and simplified view, seen while crossing an empty beach looking at the ocean.

I wanted these works to be more meditative.  In the Winter I like to wander along one of Great Barrier’s ocean beaches, picking up this and that, doing nothing in particular.  I always come back to my shed inspired. 

Experimenting with different ways to apply paint is an important part of my process.  I wanted to find a way to imitate the patterns formed by the pull of the tide at one’s feet.  Find a way to use the fluidness of the paint to capture the beauty of foam, the breaking of waves and the wind as it plays across a patch of water.

What I found was that often the work dictated what needed to be done.  The paint seemed to form itself into the delicate shapes and patterns I required. Interestingly the paint itself became the subject matter.