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Flox: Advice to My 22-Year-Old Self

02 May 2018
It was always the road less travelled that interested Flox, a stencil artist with fine art roots who has traversed her way to becoming an icon of art in Aotearoa.

It’s always much easier in hindsight isn’t it? When I was 22, I was halfway through a degree at Art School, heading into an unknown future.  

I graduated two years later and knew innately that I needed to maintain a certain momentum in my painting practice.  

This quickly lead to a business course, and the inception of Flox Design Ltd, and years of hard but truly rewarding yakka!!

We were literally taught to make a career “choice” back then.  Like ‘one path or no path’ type scenario. Even then, I knew this wasn’t going to work for me, although that is a bloody hard idea to follow through with while everyone around you is saying otherwise.  

I guess my advice would be to just trust your gut. The body is actually an amazing thing, and trusting in those gut instincts is something that I’ve learnt to take on over the years.  

Sometimes your brain says something completely different to what your inner self is thinking, and I’d say -  99 percent of the time - that being over-analytical with your thinking is not the answer.

This takes practice too, I don’t think it’s something that is necessarily easily adopted, and certainly not an easy concept to digest for my 22 year old self!  

Flox is known for her trademark native birds, ferns and flowers and vibrant use of colour combined with the delicately hand-cut stencil. Her artwork is found in private residences, schools, kiwi batches, galleries, and of course as large scale public murals. You can follow her on both Facebook and Instagram @floxnz