A portrait featuring Pippi the Hollywood pooch helped launch her career, now Nelson artist Natalia Chaplin's inviting us to identify some of the world's most famous faces.
Chaplin's Double Take exhibition at Nelson's Suter Gallery explores the way famous faces make their way into our consciousness.
Wanting something "a little different," she's created an interactive show where visitors can guess the actors, singers and directors depicted in the pastel portraits hanging on the gallery walls. Some are obvious, others are a little harder to guess.
Chaplin has put a short clue beside each painting to help visitors along. "Hey ho," one said. They're all quite cryptic, which is deliberate - she doesn't want to make it too easy, she said.
For an artist who counts actresses Jennifer Lawrence and Judi Dench among her clients, it might be only natural that her first solo show has a celebrity theme.
It started with a "surprising email" from Lawrence, who'd spotted a picture Chaplin had made of her and posted online. The Hollywood star asked Chaplin to create a portrait of Pippi, Lawrence's dog.
The actress sent Chaplin a few pictures of the dog, and the artist got to work, emailing videos of the artwork as she went. "Most of the videos had my cat in, and they joked that they'd know when the picture was done because the cat would probably attack it."
The end result was metallic looking, shimmery, and literally larger than life. "The dog I painted was about three times bigger than Pippi in real life."
After Lawrence's commission came a note from Judi Dench, who commissioned a portrait. "She sent me a lovely letter, and she got her grandson to take a photo of her with the picture."
Chaplin is from a family with "a lot of artiness". "My nan always had a packet of crayons for me when I came over. I've always enjoyed drawing and exploring different things and trying to get better.
Five years ago, she moved to Nelson to start a Bachelor of Arts and Media at NMIT. She loves painting portraits because people are naturally drawn to them. "People know other people, you can understand the emotion in someone else."
She works in a few mediums, but always comes back to pastels. "I like the level of realism you can achieve and the way you can add layers."
Chaplin hopes to take Double Take around the country and is looking for venues. At the end of the tour anyone who has guessed all the portraits correctly will go into a draw to win one of her artworks.
Comments