Séraphine Pick

In a 2015 interview the artist explained that she is not wedded to any one style or approach to painting:

In more recent years, Pick has turned to the internet for her source material for her paintings. Her 2013 exhibition Wankered Again at Michael Lett Gallery (works from which were shown in 2014 at the Ilam Campus Gallery in Christchurch) included paintings that drew on photographs of drunken teenagers that had been posted on the web.

In 2013 Pick was the inaugural artist in residence at Scots College, Wellington.

In 2012 Pick produced paintings that were used as the basis for the opening credits for New Zealand director Jane Campion's BBC television series Top of the Lake.

Reviewer James Dignan, writing of Tell Me More in the Otago Daily Times in 2010, described the development of Pick's work as moving

In 2009 Pick collaborated with writer Jo Randerson on the illustrated book Through The Door, published by Wedge Press. In the same year her work was the subject of a major survey exhibition Séraphine Pick: Tell Me More at Christchurch Art Gallery, curated by Felicity Milburn and toured to City Gallery Wellington and the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. The exhibition was accompanied by a publication with essays by Milburn, Lara Strongman, Andrew Paul Wood and others.

Pick's work has often been interpreted as autobiographical. However, in an interview published in her 2009 monograph Seraphine Pick the artist stated:

In 2007 art critic Mark Amery noted that 'Even in this day and age Pick's intense focus on the female figure in a psychological landscape makes her something of a lone figure'. He continued:

In 2007 Pick won the $20,000 first prize in the Norsewear Art Awards for her painting Phantom Limb.

In 1997–1998 Pick lectured in painting at the Elam School of Fine Arts In 1999 she was awarded the University of Otago's Frances Hodgkins Fellowship and on completing the residency remained in Dunedin until 2007.

Two early residency opportunities (the Olivia Spencer Bower Award in 1994 and the Rita Angus Artist Residency in 1995) enabled Pick to take time away from secondary school art teaching and concentrate on painting full-time. During both residencies she was able to produce bodies of work that 'built upon her past style and explored new challenges'.

In 1994 Pick was the recipient of the Olivia Spencer Bower Award, and in 1995 she was the Rita Angus Artist in Residence in Wellington. In 1999 she was awarded the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship.

Early in her career Pick was grouped with other Ilam graduates, such as Tony de Lautour, Shane Cotton, Peter Robinson, Saskia Leek and Bill Hammond under the title of the Pencilcase Painters, known for a painting style that evoked the doodlings of bored teenagers. Pick drew on many sources for the imagery in her painting, from pop culture magazines to pre-Renaissance paintings to naive art. Writing about her work of the 1990s, curator Lara Strongman notes that 'Pick frequently incorporated renditions of talismanic objects from her childhood (red boots, party dresses, paper-bag masks, iron bed-frames) in earlier works, leading her practice to be viewed misleadingly as autobiographical'.

Pick graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from Ilam School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury in 1988. In 1991 she completed a Diploma of Teaching at the Christchurch College of Education.

Séraphine Pick (born 23 May 1964, in Kawakawa, New Zealand) is a New Zealand painter. Pick has exhibited frequently at New Zealand public art galleries; a major survey of her work was organised and toured by the Christchurch Art Gallery in 2009–10.