Andi Merkens is a graduate of a 3 year AUT Graphics and Design Course. For 25 years she worked as a freelance illustrator for the advertising industry in Auckland. In 1998 Andi moved with her family to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, where she opened her highly successful gallery Pacific Art.

​

Since returning to New Zealand she has shifted her focus to painting on recycled materials. She has become an urban hunter and gatherer at op-shops, recycle centres, and building demolition sites to save and up-cycle original materials. Having lived in Devonport (and in many old houses and villas) she has a soft spot for kauri floorboards and villa materials. Andi often paints kiwiana iconic logos and advertising imagery in a more contemporary style, invoking her childhood memories and nostalgia from when her father established the first supermarket in the Bay of Plenty. 

 

Recently she's collaborated with Paddy Stafford-Bush, an artistic friend, to produce off-the-wall quirky florals. Her own work has been influenced by this collaboration and inspired by the Old Masters still lives and florals. She is currently working on a series of birds (European and endemic) with mixed media florals on recycled materials.