From studying wine and making music to creating intricate paintings that are attracting international attention, Filipino-Kiwi artist Cabnov has taken an unconventional route into the art world.
The self-taught artist is bringing her work to Queenstown for her first solo exhibition in New Zealand, with seven paintings going on display at The Arts Hole Gallery in Frankton’s Country Lane from Sunday.
Called “Mental Landscapes’’, the four-week exhibition invites viewers to explore themes including identity, ambition, balance and finding their place in the world.
Cabnov is the art pseudonym of Danikah Novio, who divides her time between the country of her birth and NZ, to which she immigrated as a child.
Gallery co-owner Tom Roberts says she was studying wine with the idea of becoming a sommelier, and making music, when her partner encouraged her to try translating her music into visual art.
Some of her drawings were noticed by a Kiwi artist, who invited her to a mural festival, “and it just kind of went from there”.
“She transitioned away from what she was doing to become a full-time artist.”
Roberts says he and partner Chani Caulfield are interested in artists who’ve taken an unusual path into the art world, and he contacted Cabnov after learning about her backstory.
The idea behind the exhibition is that we all have an inner world of thoughts, emotions, memories, influences “all built within us every day, every passing moment in a day”.
“She takes those experiences . . . translates them and gives them physical form in landscapes and characters.”
Cabnov also draws on her childhood memories of Where’s Waldo? books — the North American name for the Where’s Wally? books by British illustrator Martin Handford — to give her paintings “hidden words and hidden meanings”.
“That gives an added layer to them — the more you stand, the more you notice, and every time you come back to them, you’ll see something new.”
“Mental Landscapes’’ runs from Sunday until November 22.