ENDURING BEAUTY
For Matakana-based artist Andrea Moore, beauty doesn't end when the blooming does – it simply moves into its next phase.
Andrea Moore has been making art since high school, carving out space for creativity alongside family life and a career in fashion design, where colour and botanical prints were constants. Since settling in Matakana in 2018 – where her children grew up and where she has found herself endlessly inspired by the landscape – her practice has come into its own. Largely self-taught, though guided by influential mentors including Helene Carpenter, Andrea has developed a distinctive body of work that weaves together acrylic painting, dried botanicals, and resin in richly layered, emotionally resonant pieces.
Her process begins on the walking tracks around Matakana, gathering leaves and petals that will eventually find their way into her work. Back in the studio, she builds abstract landscapes in acrylic – intuitive, emotional compositions that often begin with a single dominant colour. Ochre yellow i a recurring anchor, a warm, grounding hue she returns to again and again, particularly in her botanical work. Once the painting has evolved through its many layers of acrylic and varnish, she selects from her collection of dried flowers and leaves, choosing what suits the painting's vibe and emotion, and placing them with care and intention.
It was the question of preservation that led her to resin. Wanting to honour the fragile beauty of her gathered botanicals without losing it, she began exploring resin work and found that it offered something more – depth, permanence, and a luminous quality that brings the whole piece together.
The petal placement, she reflects, became something meditative during a period of significant personal change. Repetitive and calming, it helped steady her as she reimagined her life. That emotional thread runs through the work as a quiet but deliberate invitation – to see that a flower past its bloom is not finished, but simply beautiful in a different way. The colour, the movement, the texture: all of it still very much alive.
A small body of work is available at The Marcelline Rug Gallery at Matakana Old School Inc., and Andrea welcomes commissions. Looking ahead, she plans to continue exploring botanicals while also pushing further into pure colour and resin work – because when it comes to colour, for Andrea it’s a complete obsession.