Talented Canterbury artist Jane Harper has put her running shoes away to putting the finishes touches to her paintings for her first solo art exhibition to be held in Christchurch next week.

Talented Canterbury artist Jane Harper has put her running shoes away to putting the finishes touches to her paintings for her first solo art exhibition to be held in Christchurch next week.

Harper won last year’s Canterbury phone book front cover art award but spends a lot of her time in the outdoors. Two months ago she won the gruelling 32km Routeburn track race through Fiordland and Mount Aspiring National Parks.

Harper, also an international skier, will hold her exhibition at Gallery O in the Arts Centre from July 9 to 12. The exhibition highlights her national concerns about the spread of wild pines that ruin native bush and other areas.

Her paintings highlight the spread of wild pine trees (known as wilding pines) springing up on farm land, national parks, reserves and nation bush areas all over New Zealand. The wilding pines are blighting the traditional Kiwi landscape, she said today.

"Around my home in Castle Hill and other areas all over the country, wilding pines, are taking over native bush and we need to launch more native reforestation projects.

"My art focuses on our natural heritage and I hope the event raises awareness of the importance of getting rid of the wilding pines. My neighbour heads a reforestation project and they are always needing funding and volunteers to be able to continue the work of taking out pines."

The pines, introduced to New Zealand in 1860, are a serious nuisance above the bushline and in tussock grasslands and they create a major intrusion and damage natural ecosystems.   They don’t offer berries or nectar to encourage birds and insects and the pine needles form a carpet which discourages regeneration of the native forest floor.

The former Cashmere High School student is inspired by the South Island landscapes which she studies to produce her paintings. Her attention is often captured by the interaction of light and shadow, especially in the early morning or late afternoon, the times which she considers the most enjoyable to be outdoors.

Nearly all her landscape works for the exhibition are painted in such a way as if the viewer is looking down a path while out hiking, as to encourage people to get out and enjoy New Zealand’s natural beauty.                                                                       

Harper, an international mountaineering ski racer, exhibited at the Castle Hill bi-annual art exhibition last year and sold all her paintings within the first hour of the opening. She won the People's Choice Award for one of her paintings at the end of the exhibition.