Naomi Azoulay is a middle-eastern-born, Auckland-based award-winning portrait and mixed media collage artist. Naomi creates captivating, bold, intimate and vibrant mixed media collages and oil paintings. She aims to tackle social justice issues, decolonise the art space and expand the definition of beauty. She is passionate about exploring the female gaze and probing traditional gender roles. With over three decades of experience in education, Naomi has also earned a reputation as an innovative and dynamic art educator.Naomi talks about her childhood in Israel, why she came to emigrate to Aotearoa 22 years ago and how the Israel-Hamas War of today has affected her. We chat about how she discovered the art of collage, when she came to have the confidence to call herself as an artist and why she thinks collage is such a great medium. We dive deep into some of her collages and paintings and why she likes to portray women in all of her work, how she manages and promotes the 2 sides to her art practice and the amazing work she does in community art education. And she has some great perspectives on being creative, learning new art skills, buying local, the merits and magic of intuitive collage, supporting her community and applying for funding - to name a few!https://www.instagram.com/naomi_azoulay_collage/https://www.instagram.com/naomi_azoulay_art/Ngā mihi, thanks for listening!See the artist's work on our blog https://www.creativematters.co.nz/blog You can follow us for updates on https://www.instagram.com/creativematterspodcast/ Please rate and review our show to help others find us https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/creative-matters/id1561034043