Wendy Shipman is a New Zealand artist whose contemplative gouache paintings explore the quiet intersections of identity, memory, and faith. Based on the Kāpiti Coast of New Zealand, she continues to evolve her artistic voice while remaining deeply rooted in her lifelong love of gouache. With a practice shaped by more than fifty years of creative experience, she brings a refined sensitivity to colour, form, and the subtle architecture of composition. Her work is grounded in the belief that art can be a place of restoration—a gentle space where viewers can pause, breathe, and reconnect with what matters.

Wendy’s journey with gouache began during her early training and work as a tracer draughtswoman in New Zealand and the UK, where precision, line, and disciplined craftsmanship first shaped her eye. In the early 1980s, she deepened her practice while working in an art supply and gallery space, surrounded by materials, makers, and the daily rhythm of creative work. By the 1990s, her love of design and gouache led her to study soft furnishings through the City and Guilds program in the UK. In 1996, her garden design portfolio for the English Garden School’s correspondence course was awarded distinction and retained as a model for full‑time students—an early affirmation of the clarity and intentionality that continue to define her visual language.

Drawing on generational story and the beauty of everyday moments, Wendy creates images that feel both intimate and intentional. Each painting is built slowly, layer by layer, revealing a distilled visual language that balances precision with poetic restraint. Her approach reflects a modernist clarity while remaining deeply personal, shaped by her lifelong fascination with how composition acts as invisible architecture beneath the surface of an artwork.

Alongside her studio practice, Wendy is the founder of MakeHer Studio, where she teaches women to rediscover creativity as a pathway to identity and wholeness. Her workshops and resources blend technical skill with soulful reflection, inviting others into the same gentle transformation that defines her own work.