Kirsty Black has achieved national recognition for her work, having been a finalist in New Zealand’s foremost art prizes such as: the Molly Morpeth Canaday Award (2017), the Parkin Drawing Prize (2020), and the New Zealand Painting and Printmaking Award (2023).

Kirsty’s joyfully titled paintings often provide a prompt for reading the work. In Wayzgoose, abstract forms delight the imagination as inspiring stories and adventurous figures emerge and sweep across the canvas. Poly Woggle Fairground relates to Poly Woggle tadpole’s adventures can be spied on in Kirsty’s colourful gestures wriggling playfully across the canvas.

Flip Flop Fandango contains colourful shapes echoing arms and legs move and clash across the canvas, doing the flip flop fandango. Somersault Sam contains abstract gestures that coordinate delightful movements as though Somersault Sam has just flip flopped into the water.

Jitterbug Jazz Diptych offers a story of dancing grasshoppers and beetles that jitterbug across two canvases. Sauntering Sybil is playful composition combines with an intuitive palette and Sybil emerges, sauntering joyfully to her own beat.

The energy that is created through colour and shape interacting is magnetic, and allows the viewer to interpret the paintings for themselves. On every new viewing of Kirsty’s paintings, new elements are discovered, offering an escape from reality.