Across a rich range of disciplines, senior students in the Visual Art Faculty embrace challenge and discovery to transform ideas into meaningful visual expressions that reflect both their individuality and their developing artistic voice.
As we approach the middle of Term Three in the Visual Art Faculty we take time to celebrate more than finished artworks and planning for folios - we celebrate the vision, perseverance, and creative growth of our senior Visual Art students. Through drawing, painting, design, printmaking, sculpture and photography, each student has transformed ideas into powerful visual stories, embracing challenges, refining technical skills, and discovering their unique artistic voice.
This point in the year is also traditionally the time to view the artworks of our International Baccalaureate Visual Art students at their exhibition which encapsulates the eighteen month journey as artists in this course. With over 70 artworks in a diverse range of media, both traditional and contemporary, there is always at least one artwork that speaks to you as the viewer.
Our St. Peter’s Diploma students are working on final practical artworks before embarking on research and presentation components in the course. This is a time where they are enquiring about the pathways in Visual Art in both IB and NCEA before making decisions for the last two years of schooling. It is a reflective time where students critique their strengths, learning styles and their future beyond school with guidance for our Visual Art staff.
Senior Visual Art Design students are guided by their own personal interests and creative voice. Students use this exploration as a springboard to develop unique, meaningful bodies of work that reflect their individuality. As a teacher, I have appreciated and enjoyed witnessing the growth in their digital competence and the problem-solving they use to explore and create independently. Students recognise that it is not only the technical mastery gained through working across digital platforms, but also the innovation, risk-taking, and personal expression each student brings to their practice that showcase their journey from emerging learners to confident digital artists.
Over the Design Art programme, students are developing and refining digital drawing skills using industry-standard platforms such as Procreate and Photoshop, building strong technical foundations in digital illustration and graphic design. Students explore contemporary illustration and graphic design practices, investigating how design principles translate into real-world applications including poster design, character design, storyboarding, illustrating, event tickets, and music-related artwork.
In Photography one of the enduring and appealing aspects of studying this subject is the opportunity for the students to explore ideas and themes that are important to them. They also have the opportunity to embark on a journey of learning and experimentation which results in outcomes that they could not have entirely predicted. This is one of the most rewarding aspects of their learning journey.
This term sees our Year 13 students working towards completing the final stages of their external portfolio assessment. This is a culmination of months of research, idea development and the production of original work links to a personal proposition they develop early on in the course. The images here provide a glimpse of the diversity of work that each student produces and how it reflects their individual decision making, collaboration with their teacher and creative wonderings they have had along the way.
The senior Visual Art journey is ultimately about far more than completing portfolios or meeting assessment requirements; it is about discovering possibilities, taking creative risks, and developing the confidence to communicate ideas through art. As our students move towards the completion of their senior studies and consider their futures beyond school, we celebrate not only the exceptional work they have produced, but the creativity, resilience, independence, and joy of achievement that have shaped them as emerging artists.