Anna-Marie Kingsley recently scored a ‘perfect 10’ in a telephone survey:  “They asked me how happy I was on a scale of one to 10, and I had to say 10. There was this long silence on the end of the line!”

It’s partly to do with living in the beautiful Hinau Valley, north west of Carterton, in a, sustainable house she built with husband Malcom, and partly because she’s living her dream of painting and teaching art. All a long way from her previous incarnations as an ENZA technician and  phlebotomist.

Anna-Marie helps run the expanding Wai Art Group in Carterton, and is a founder and trustee on the Wai Art Trust board. Wai Art is staged the inaugural Portrait Awards in February, which attracted entries from all over New Zealand. Factor in writing a monthly art column, and home-schooling her five year old son Allen, and it’s not surprising her phone is running hot.

In fact she’s taken to wearing a headset so she can answer calls while painting at the large table she’s set up in the living room: “A shed at the end of the garden wouldn’t have worked because I need to be able to jump up and cook or look after Allen,” she says.

Anna-Marie is steadily building a reputation as a respected contemporary artist, known for her large-scale, realist paintings of bottles, rusty chains and taps – a genre she describes as ‘Bloke Art’. Her work is featured in the annual New Zealand’s Favourite Artists, and she has been a finalist in several national awards.

The idea for ‘bloke art’ came from overhearing a group of Martinborough men bemoaning the lack of art that interested them. With a background in watercolour painting, and several years painting in acrylics (inspired by Carterton artist Jan Eagle’s classes), Anna-Marie got underway. Her first ‘bloke art’ painting of empty Tui and Export Gold bottles, left over from a BBQ, was snapped up by the managing director of Dominion Breweries.

Although her starting point was commercial (and she has found a niche group of buyers who are relatively unaffected by the crunch in the art market), Anna-Marie has become genuinely hooked. Painting rust and verdigris realistically sometimes requires up to 30 layers of tinted and speckled paint: “I must have a masculine brain,” she laughs.

Malcom provides valuable feedback: “Men are very particular. If Malcolm he sees something that makes him uncomfortable, like a part on a tap that should be hexagonal, he tells me. I know I have to change it because other men will immediately see it should be hexagonal as well.”

Teaching is another buzz: “I just love the people contact. I get my batteries recharged from people and I’m on a huge high after a class. I’m amazed at the talent out there and I have been incredibly moved to see how people develop their own personal style.”

The first of her weekend artist retreats, run with Jane Sinclair, is being held on 14-15 March at the French Village in neighbouring Mangaterere Valley. Beginners are welcome.