- Meet Our Tutors - 

We are always looking for new and exciting classes and workshops to offer our community. If you are interested in running a workshop or course please email us at kumeuarts@gmail.com
Holly Manning: Kumeu Children's Art Club tutor
​Holly Manning is the Kumeu Children's Art Club Tutor and is also one of our Member artists. Her personal outlook on life and attitude towards art is reflected well in her students who produce fun, colourful and energetic creations. 

As a multidisciplinary artist Manning draws, paints using a variety of media particularly watercolour, gouache, coloured pencils, and POSCA pens. She creates zines and also does embroidery. 

Working from people she sees, and places she’s been Holly classifies herself as a ‘storyteller.’ She translates life events or just the ‘everyday’ subject matter into a world of her own. 

Manning’s purpose behind her creativity is very simplistic;
“Everything I make is about having fun and bringing joy – what else would be the point?” And she brings this vibrancy to our Art Club children. ​
Michelle Reid: The Painters Studio
Michelle Reid is a visual artist and educator living in Riverhead, Tāmaki Makaurau. She graduated with a Bachelor of Textile Design from Massey in 2001, and in 2019 gained a Postgraduate
Diploma from Elam School of Fine Arts with Distinction.
Reid has received a few painting awards and her artworks are held in contemporary private collections in Auckland.
​Michelle is also a Kumeu Arts Centre committee member, a Creative Matters educator, and completed the Toipoto mentoring programme in 2022.
In her artwork Reid explores atmosphere aesthetics and emotional spaces. Reid is interested in the smudging of space between locatable and lyrical references. Recent exhibitions include ‘In The Wild Ballet’ at Lakehouse Arts and ‘Iteration 14’ at Mothermother.

The Painter’s Studio is a 3hr session where artists and creatives can connect and propel their interests in visual arts. Each session begins with arts related readings or discussions followed by self-directed studio.
Amber Emm: Realism Painting Tutor
I have been teaching at Kumeu Art Centre since 2012. I have found a haven of like minded and supportive friends and an ever improving building.
My style of teaching in hands on. Everyone comes with his or her own project and whether they are complete novice or experienced painters get help individually. I work my way around the students one by one helping them with their individual journey whether it is in watercolour, acrylic or oils. I can advise or show how to improve on technique, colours, use of brushes, and order of process, layout and design, etc and onto selling.
There are around 8-12 students per class and I have a policy if you pay for 10 consecutive classes and know you will miss some you can make them up in any of my other classes as long as it is in your 10 weeks. The classes are friendly and talkative and I have several students who have been coming to me for years not because they haven’t learnt anything but for the friends and atmosphere and support they find in my classes.
My background is  a tradesman sign writer (before the computers took over) having had my own business for 10 years till I either had to get all the computer gear to compete or get out so saw it as a chance to GET PAINTING. I am represented by 3 Auckland galleries and do regular exhibitions. I have been published in “New Zealand’s Favorite Artists” twice and have won numerous awards over the years. I was talked into teaching in 1998 and have loved it ever since. I have become great friends with many of my students and value their input into my life as I feel I get as much for them as they do from me.
https://www.amberemm-art.com
Louise Wild: Ceramics Tutor

Louise Wild is interested in creating textures and patterns on the clay surfaces. She makes hand built pottery tableware and decorative pieces using stoneware clay.
​Louise spends a lot of time at the beach and in rural New Zealand and loves the simplicity of mother nature; texture, pattern, colour, shade, earth, sea, sky.
She has been a member of Kumeu Arts for over 8 years, and tutors the Friday morning Ceramics course.
Lesley Smith: Botanical Art Tutor
BA(Hons) Graphic Design, DipSBA(Dist)
I fondly remember a book my Aunt Betty gave me when I was about 8 or 9. It was titled 'How to draw Flowers' and I loved copying the drawings and 'having a go'. I've no idea where it is now and as other hobbies came and went I forgot all about it. Little did I know that some 30+ years later I would be experiencing that joy again, finding delight in painting both the ordinary and the spectacular plants in all their infinite varieties … and remembering that book! 
I have always loved 'creating', whether it be knitting, card making, painting or making costumes or scenery for my children's school plays, but it was the chance visit to an exhibition of botanical art back in the 90s in London that set me, although unknowingly then, on the path to where I am today. I had just completed a degree in Graphic Design at Middlesex University in North London, where I specialized in Scientific Illustration. So began a career in medical illustration drawing on my knowledge from previous nursing days which would, or so I thought, satisfy me for years to come. However I soon became disillusioned when computer generated illustration started to take over scientific illustration. My watercolour skills were becoming obsolete in the medical field and they needed a new outlet. 
My first foray into botanical art was when the UK Clematis Society asked me to paint a Clematis of my choice for the cover of their journal. By this time, art was on the back burner as we had 3 young children and I was back on night duty part time, so I was delighted to be asked. However it was in the middle of our UK winter, with great naivety that I rushed to buy a Clematis from the local garden centre! Yes, they did have some, but of course they were just bare twigs, having been pruned weeks before! Somehow I managed to nurse and cajole the poor specimen indoors which eventually obliged by producing a few leaves and eventually a flower! My love of botanical painting was born! 
Unfortunately, that was it for many years. Family commitments took over, I was still nursing and art was relegated to the back burner with a few hours snatched here and there. We came back to New Zealand 12 years ago (I married a Kiwi) and again art was more or less a hobby. I worked and still do, in a learning support department of a local college and loved helping the students become the best they can be, watching them grow in confidence. I especially love the art related topics, and take delight in seeing them produce art which they can be proud of.  
However I never lost my desire to do more botanical illustration, and eventually found a distance learning course run by the Society of Botanical Artists (SBA) in the UK. After 2 and a half years of obsessively painting well into the night, and all though the weekends and school holidays, I graduated with a Distinction. Thank you Aunty Betty xx 
I hope to share my passion with you and inspire you to see the delicate beauty and glorious detail of plants around us and successfully transfer that beauty to paper.
https://www.lesleyalexanderart.com