Artist statements are often a bit odd.
And the press release for the "New Horizons" exhibition was no exception.
"Whilst the output of the artists involved in the latest exhibition at the Community Gallery is varied, they all have one thing in common.
"Like the royal albatross, all of the artists exhibiting have chosen to live on the Otago Peninsula in Dunedin."
The peninsula has long harboured an enthusiastic colony of artists - and albatrosses.
Ewan McDougall, Pauline Bellamy, Manu Berry and Simon Richardson all call the peninsula home.
New Zealand's most celebrated artist, Colin McCahon, worked out his "vision" of the New Zealand landscape with studies of the peninsula and even poet Sam Hunt heads down there to stay when he's visiting Dunedin.
Now a group of local artists is holding an art exhibition which celebrates the 30km-long almost-an-island.
"New Horizons" features works by painters Cathy Shemansky, Bev Stephens, Fiona James and Janet Wood, sculptor Vivian Keenan and photographer Tudor Caradoc-Davies.
"We're all imports to Dunedin and these are new horizons to us," Cathy Shemansky says.
"[The exhibition] is about how coming here has changed us and influenced our artistic style."
• Shemansky is typical of the artists, moving to the peninsula from Queensland, Australia, after years of Christmas holidays in Dunedin.
"I remember standing on a windswept shore at Portobello on the very first visit and wishing this wild and wonderful place was home. And now it is," she says.
"I have always loved the sea and don't feel a painting is quite right without water. Now I live right on the harbour.
"I find the colours here more intense than the bright but rather over-exposed light in Australia. My medium of soft pastels is perfect for capturing the moody and dramatic weather conditions of Otago."
• Sculptor Vivian Keenan swapped the subtropical climes of Great Barrier Island for Tomahawk Beach a year ago.
"I'm finding the change of landscape, weather and the easy accessibility to materials has broadened my range of work," she says.
"Living on Great Barrier meant that most of my materials were ordered by phone and freighted out to the island, which placed certain restrictions on spontaneity within my work.
Now . . . it's a 10-minute drive to obtain most of what I need . . ."
"Since moving to Dunedin I have started producing a range of waka and woven torsos made from copper - a direct response to my changed surroundings - and the influence that comes with living in a city where there is so much happening in all aspects of the arts."
• Painter Fiona James says: "I lived in Dunedin for about eight years before falling in love with a section on the peninsula. I am currently building a home in Broad Bay.
"I began painting about eight years ago while I was off work with ME. Painting opened up new horizons for me," she says.
"I have learnt a new way of looking at my surroundings. I find the scenery on the peninsula inspiring. I never tire of its beauty and love trying to capture its colours. Painting has changed the way I view landscapes."
• Painter Janet Wood studied commercial art at Mansfield College of Art in England in the 1960s and moved to Dunedin seven years ago.
"Up till then, I'd painted watercolours and dabbled with life drawing, but New Zealand has pushed me to expand my art to include a variety of styles and subjects," she says.
"Whenever my sister visits Dunedin she feels that there is something in the water over here and that being artistic is a requirement to living here.
"I think she may have something."
• Photographer Tudor Caradoc-Davies and his wife, Gill, emigrated to Dunedin from South Africa in 1979 with their three children "to start a new life".
After raising their children in Dunedin, they moved to Harbour Cone in 1993.
"This was life-changing, with views of the harbour and hills constantly altering in the light every few minutes, and the heartbeat of the tides rising and falling," Caradoc-Davies says.
"The peninsula contains places of great beauty and emotion and I have found in this a new mystical dimension in my awareness of the world around me.
"I get up at dawn to watch colours develop. I wait for the sun to burn through the mist, or I wait for the full moon to rise. All of these are aspects of this new world for me," he muses.
"Even driving along the Portobello road gives me opportunities to pull over and take part in this world and to take photographs of views, seals, birds and dolphins."
