Hi, my name is Ian Herbert, I am the Travelling Artist. Although I live and travel and paint all over the world, Tauranga in New Zealand is my home and where I grew up. In my latest series, called ‘Never Kiss a Piranha 2008’ I have captured moments and experiences that I have gained from travelling through South America, my latest expedition. It had its highs, such as holding an art workshop in Peru for children in need, to its lows, when I have to be a silent witness as huge areas of the Amazon are cleared before my very eyes. To be too outspoken can easily end in death when you are in the conflict zone that even the police avoid.  

Other times are just hilarious. For example, I was holding a menacing stick of Bolivian Dynamite with the fuse burning down very quickly. I was in a daydream while standing outside Potosi, a mine in Bolivia, and I didn’t notice my guide had sneaked the Dynamite into my hand.  

Potosi has been estimated to have claimed 7 million lives in the last 400 years through miners cough and accidents, and where I came across kids the age of 12 working in the dangerous mine shafts with picks and shovels.

The average life expectancy for a miner is 37 years old. As for the Dynamite, fortunately I had time to throw it before it blew me up and the guide got his laugh. Cheap thrills in a place where life is cheap. 

So what has this got to do with Art? For me, it means inspiration and education. As a travelling artist, my art is influenced by the foreign landscapes I see, the cultures and the history. Over the last 20 years I have painted in New Zealand and now Europe, Africa, North and South America and Asia.  

I now combine this experience with Children’s art. ‘It’s good for the kids to exhibit, because they get to see that they are capable of achieving. What I like the kids to do is believe in their style, no one else will do that for them. And when they think its tough going, I remind them of the 12 year old kids in Bolivia.

But what makes the workshop programme really special, is that the kids also receive art works that were produced in a previous workshop, hence, an art exchange is created.

This exchange does more than share art work, it encourages the kids to ask about other places and other cultures from far away.   Although I have my university education, I still maintain that travel is the Degree in Life. 

What makes me an Artist is the way I use art to express my creative side and help others do the same.

Ian Herbert Curriculum Vitae including Exhibitions and Achievements

An act of god or an artistic feat; Ian Herbert caught this potato on the end of his finger after it was dropped from a plane. Believe it………….or not.