Rudie

Rudie specialises in hand-sculpting locally milled chemical-free timbers such as redwood and macrocarpa into an extensive range of artisan furniture, platters and garden sculptures.

“Verhoef's rough-hewn items are also objects of everyday life. His thick wooden platterboards, butcher blocks and tables are bold and bulky and happily acknowledge the coexistence between technology and nature…Made from chemical-free timbers, his work displays a wealth of pattern and colour, highlighting the grain of the timber used.”

(Julie Jopp, Otago Daily Times, 22 Dec 2011)

With a background in building spanning 35 years Rudie has worked on the restoration of many interesting historic buildings both here and in Europe including the complete renovation of a three story fourteenth century café/apartment building in the heart of Amsterdam.

In 2002 he completed the award winning restaurant Fleur’s Place at Moeraki and he subsequently fitted out The Loan and Merc, Fleur’s other restaurant in the historic precinct of Oamaru with a rustic carvery and bar, oversized banquet tables, chunky sideboards and wooden platters.

In 2010 Rudie and Liz completed the renovation of Coast Road Retreat, formerly the Catholic Church at Seacliff and now a private residence. The interior became a creative collaboration of Rudie’s carpentry and Liz’s artwork as well as original leadlight by Hazel Heal and wrought iron work by James Abbott. 

Liz

Liz works full-time from her home-based studio on the Otago Peninsula which provides the inspiration for her original oil paintings, pastels and drawings.

A well-known New Zealand painter, she has twice won the Telecom Art Awards in the Otago region and won the Cleveland Small Works Award in 2005. Liz gained a Master of Fine Arts in painting in 2003.

Her paintings and pastels are derived from glimpses of the Otago landscape. 

“Liz Abbott’s bright sunset colours and night scenes work between scales, reproducing whole bays and tidal estuaries as if they were huge bouquets of coloured flowers, returning then to tiny images of single buds. So much energy and so much thought for the urban dwellers moment of distance, dead centre in the living room wall.”

(Bridie Lonie, Listener, June 25 2005, p.46)

Liz’s solo exhibition “Fanny & Me” at the Hocken Library in 2006 featured a series of both miniature and very large oil paintings Liz made in response to the work of nineteenth century painter Fanny Brunton from her sketchbook in the Hocken Pictorial Collections.

“Liz’s work in this exhibition is inspired by her own journeys and still moments of observation on holidays and within daily life, echoing Fanny’s process of sketching within moments of freedom from domestic concerns…Fanny and Liz’s works viewed in unison, invite philosophical contemplation. Life, our small time on this planet, we are reminded, is simultaneously big and small, dark and light, linear as a highway and circular as history. Whatever view is taken, our passions are what anchor us, and in Liz and Fanny’s case, this is, and was, their art.”

(Fanny And Me: Exhibition Catalogue Essay by Janine Cook, 2006)