It is not always the "pretty things'' that capture the eye of Oamaru artist Alison Bevers.
The mixed-media artist's work includes ceramic mosaics, driftwood "constructions'', and mixed-media paintings with oil pastel, ink and graphite on card and canvas.
Her paintings of historic buildings in the Victorian precinct focus on the ones that might be missed at first glance.
It was the feel, perhaps the patina, on the 19th-century buildings that drew her to them.
"I might be interested in things that might not necessarily be pretty,'' she said.
"I like the muted tones in terms of a pallette.
"These are things as they appear. I don't make them up.''
Her first show, 10 years after moving to the coastal town from Cornwall, England, and pursuing art, is the Oamaru Art Fair under way at the vacated former wine bar Birdlands in Harbour St.
In total 27 artists, half local and the rest from across New Zealand, are taking part in the Oamaru Art Fair from March 17 to 28.
Oamaru arts community stalwart Donna Demente said the art fair was a precursor to a much larger, much broader event planned for next year.
After the fair's costs were recovered from artists' sales commissions, the remainder would be pooled to create seed funding for next year's inaugural Oamaru Biennial Exhibition.
The Oamaru Art Fair would get the ball rolling for a showcase of "everything handcrafted'' by Oamaru artists and artisans.
It would expand beyond the art on display at the fair.
Wine, whisky, beer, furniture, clothing, and crafts would accompany the prints, paintings, drawings, sculpture and photography on display this month.
"In Oamaru, there's so much handmade stuff. Why not celebrate that as a point of difference?'' Ms Demente said.
"There's a lot of people doing just ‘traditional craft with integrity' that doesn't get acknowledged enough, so we're trying to pull all those things out of the woodwork to be seen really, and to pull people into town.''
And while the Oamaru arts community was alive and well, gathering Oamaru's artists for a group exhibition benefited the community, she said.
"When I first started the gallery, it was an arts collective. It didn't work out as a permanent thing, but I've been really wanting to revive that idea and it's actually all the same people that are in it, the local ones,'' Ms Demente said.
"I think there's a real need for that ‘co-operativeness' with artists, just not on a fulltime basis. It's sort of nice to have projects we can do instead.
"There are a lot of people working in isolation, so it's really good to just hammer them out of their holes a bit.
"There are a lot of under-rated artists in Oamaru, definitely. There is a lot of talent seething under the surface that doesn't get out enough ... hopefully we'll change that.''