A talented artist and illustrator, he took up woodturning as a new challenge. He says “My wife and I decided to get a wood-turning lathe to experiment with and like most people, after making a few dozen bowls, I started seeing what else I could do.”
The challenge of turning thin-walled pieces led to piercing and texturing work and then employing his artistic talents to airbrush and paint the pieces.
Sparkle
He hands me a delicately carved bowl from the display cabinet. In the hands, the piece entitled Sandy Bay Pohutukawa sparkles with an air of summertime. Three pohutukawa trees with their roots growing out of the base intertwine, reaching up to a textured crimson rim. Through the delicate leaves and branches you can see the sand, pebbles and sea reflected on the inside of the bowl. Photographs hardly do the work justice. Gordon won’t say how many hours it took to make as he doesn’t produce work to a timetable. It’s finished when he’s happy with it.

From his earliest memories, Gordon has always been making things. Born into a farming family in Kenya, he spent his early years exploring the savannah on his doorstep and gained a love of the outdoors. Moving to New Zealand with his parents when he was 10, he found a whole new range of colours and textures in the bush to inspire him.

Read more in the June/July 2010 issue of The Shed